>> we have to repeal obamacar obamacare. >> he proposed wrong and reckless policies. >> we'll take back america. we will win this election. >> this election season, one network has been most watched and most trusted. >> how do you feel about the last four years? >> fasten your seat belts, it's decision day. >> special coverage starts right now o. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> bret: the voters vote. the counters count. as the candidates and their supporters hold their breath. we will take you through all of it. all evening long and in to the morning. welcome to america's election headquarters and a special edition of "special report." i'm bret baier. >> i'm megyn kelly. it comes down to tonight. after 1100 days of campaigning, four debates, and billion dollars spent on campaign ads, it's finally

election night. we are now less than an hour away from the first poll results. and some polls are coming in. closing in. indiana, kentucky right now. now we do not report any results until all the polls close in each state. the first of six states close at 7:00 p.m. eastern. >> bret: it's expected to be one of the closest and most closely watched vote count in american history. the candidates on a cross country race, for electoral votes. 270 is needed. this is the big number. >> glenn: the race for white house takes center stage. live look. president obama headquarters in chicago. governor romney in boston. we'll take you there live in a moment. we are getting information on

why they vote the way they are. martha maccallum will cover that for us. >> reporter: they are analyzing the response as they come out of the polling places tonight. there are key states like ohio and virginia. the polls are still open for hours as people come home from work and continue to vote. so many areas we haven't heard from yet. what we can tell you for sure so far is that this is a very tight race tonight. let's start with the national poll question. direction of the country. are we on the right track or the wrong track? it's evenly divided. those saying we are on the right direction and going for president obama, no surprise there. 52%, though, say we are headed in the wrong direction. they are backing governor romney. now voters are split on whether the economy is getting better or worse. huge question tonight for everyone, of course. you have about four out of ten states getting better. three of ten say it's getting

worse. three of ten says it stays the same for them. slightly more voters think governor romney would hand the economy better. slightly more voters think that president obama is more in touch with people like them. okay? look at ohio and go forward. this is the hotly contested state perhaps the most, though, of the evening. union households. not a big surprise, they are breaking for president obama tonight by a fairly large margin. working class whites are siding with romney. in ohio. to show you just how close it is in the state of virginia, as we get a early look at this. that is where federal government workers reside. you would think they would lean more toward president obama but they split the vote. slight essential going to governor romney in that measure. throughout the evening. so we dig for the numbers. a lot of information to go through. more coming in, on the next wave as well. a tight race. that is one thing we can tell you right away on the exit

polls. >> both candidates have been running for several years. we begin with carl cameron live in romney headquarters in boston. we begin with carl. >> thank you. country facing historical challenges and the race being historically tight for a year, governor romney today said intellectually he thought for some time he thought he would win the race. he only prepared one speech. acceptance speech. romney is now after two campaign stops on the trail on election day, back in massachusetts where he began the day. >> after a six-year quest for the presidency, former massachusetts governor mitt romney and wife ann cast 2012 ballot. the candidate give his wife a

kiss goodbye and headed out for final campaign appearances to boost turn-out. >> i feel great about ohio. >> paul ryan and his wife voted in wisconsin. ryan met up with ryan in ohio where they greeted an thanked the volunteers. >> i'm so optimistic. not just about the results of the election, but optimistic about what is ahead for america. >> i got a good feel for it on the ground. it didn't feel it in 2008 frankly. we have momentum. >> tossups are a slight essential for ohio and pennsylvania for president. g.o.p. candidates traditionally outperform the polls on election day. >> we do better on election day. that historically has been the pattern. democrats tend to try to bank as many votes as they can. in early voting and absentee ballots. >> without a win in ohio, romney's path to 270 electoral vote is harder. he focused on pennsylvania where the race tightened as a possible a terntive.

>> appreciate all the work you are doing. >> then back to boston to await returns with often eye on florida, ohio and virginia, team romney expects as they go, so will the nation. for months despite record spending, record campaign activity, record advertising, neither candidate really been able to break away from the other. tonight in boston there is optimism. hope, anxiousness. preparation for what could be a very late night that could spill in tomorrow or beyond. megyn, bret? >> thank you. >> bret: now to chief white house correspondent ed henry in chicago. sned >> good evening, bret. last night, the obama camp was predicting a blow-out. we got off the phone with the senior advisors saying they have to admit florida, virginia, and slew of battlegrounds are too close to call. >> president obama tried to displace calm and confidence today -- >> i expect we will have a good night.

>> it was clear last night the magnitude of the moment set in. as he waits to find out whether he will secure his place in history as a transformational president or mere one-term wonder. >> he said yes, we can. and we did. >> in the freezing cold in iowa where it all started for him, a tear was visibly running down his face. he admitted today it was probably from a mix of frigid weather and nostalgia of it all. >> i have to stay that being back in des moines, thinking about all the folks in iowa who worked so hard. on my campaign in 2008. then to see them still working hard in 2012. >> today, the obama camp is dealing with another emotion. concern. 24 hours after top advisors david axelrod and david plouffe boldly predicted electoral blow-out and said they cld win all nine battlegrounds like ohio, democrats today rushed vice president biden to cleveland. as the democratic officials mocked republican romney last-minute visit to ohio and

pennsylvania. >> we're not making a hail mary for a state that is hard to win here at the end. that's what we think is going on in pennsylvania on romney side. >> while the president spent the afternoon continuing his lucky tradition of playing basketball with friends on election day. local media report the athletic facility was foreclosed upon last month. maybe not such a good omen. >> i hope that everybody is out there and fired up and knocking on doors. >> earlier he worked the phones at a chicago campaign office to thank volunteers and n neighboring wisconsin. was blissful again as he offered words to his opponent the man he charges not to be trusted. >> i want to say to governor romney, congratulations on a spirited campaign. i know that his supporters are just as engaged and just as enthusiastic and working just as hard today. >> after-school today the president's daughters flew here to chicago with their grandmother. they will have a family dinner at the president's private

home as they wonder and wait, i'm told by a senior advisor. they are expecting inside the obama camp, waiting for florida results until 2:00 a.m. they think it's that close. >> bret: ed, thank you. take a look at the closings now. 7:00. you know, this the billboard. but other people can, in fact, use it. closings at 7:00. a number of states. vermont, indiana, kentucky, south carolina, georgia. the big one is virginia. this is really the battleground of battlegrounds. especially early in the night. the counties that were really looking at for president obama and romney and battle going on, right up here. in the suburbs of washington. fairfax county and next door in prince william county. in 2008 in the counties president obama did well against mccain. 61% to 389%. in fairfax.

prince william, louden, 54-vi. the president will need to do well there. he has to do well there to run up the vote total and make up for romney strength in south and west of virginia. watching virginia very closely when the polls close. >> well done. >> a state that is critical is virginia. i went for president obama in 2008, but romney needs it. mike emanuel live in richmond. good evening. >> election officials describe turn-out as robust and ahead of 2008 levels. experts predicting the record turn-out in the range of 4 million voters. with long lines across virginia that could be achieved. republican vice presidential nominee paul ryan made one final visit to virginia.

the richmond area this afternoon. just hours before the polls close at 7:00 p.m. ryan told campaign staff and volunteers this is are a great effort. they should keep it up. wake up tomorrow morning knowing they did evening they could in virginia. for romney and paul ryan, the path to 270 electoral votes becomes much more difficult if they lose virginia and it's 13 critical electoral votes. so they campaign here like it's critical. clearly not wanting to risk losing a close race. ryan's visit comes after romney made two stops yesterday. vice president joe biden campaigned here as well. those in line at 7:00 p.m. will be allowed to vote, and both sides express confidence that heavy turn-out mean they are getting their people to the polls. >> thank you. >> we'll have chris wallace and his special guest. chris?

>> karl rove, architect of george w. bush's victories in 2000, 2004. we don't have the fancy graphics. the guys crunch the numbers. that is what they will do if they were with a candidate in war room on this night. karl, you talk to people all over the country. republican sources. what do you hear? >> this is the most terrible day for concrete information. you have to accept people's anecdotal information about people standing in lines here and not standing in lines there. if we have one county in america, putting the turn-out in the county, on the web, real-time. pasco county in florida, which has been -- >> literally counting it. >> they're not telling you how people voted but florida is partisan registration state.

so they are showing what percentage of the voters are -- what number are republicans, democrats and independents have shown up. republicans are polling in excess of 70% of the counties registered republicans voted of 5:00. 60% of democrats and 54% of independents. if you go to pasco county and they will have it online. that is as concrete as we get. >> joe, what are you hearing? >> same thing. talking to chicago and volunteers around the country. anecdotal on both sides about big turn-out. charlottesville and vass. 2008, 14,708 people voted there. it's a college town. today, that is since 4:00 today. 16,000 at 4:00. 2,000 above what happened last year. you are hear the same anecdotes of what karl talked about a bigger republican

turn-out. >> conflicting information. at 1:00 p.m., turn-out of charlottesville was 36% of registered voters. by 4:00 they magically showed up. >> folks may wonder why we focus so much on virginia. this goes to something that two of you are talking about last spring. 3-2-1 strategy. six states. that get romney presidency. >> three states historically states that obama carried. ohio and florida, battleground states. that swung republican to democrat in 2008. if romney wins those two then he just needs one other state, anything like new hampshire, pennsylvania, wisconsin, iowa, colorado, nevada, any of those. >> five. >> in the 3-2-1 strategy be virginia is one of the three. if you don't win virginia, how much of a problem? >> they're blocked.

that is the strategy -- a lot of the electoral strategy was to block romney in the 3-2-1. can they block him in ohio and win that? can they block him in virginia? if they win virginia or ohio, either one, starts to make it tough. unless some other -- you start to change the strategy. >> quickly, virginia must-win for romney? >> it would be great to win it. historically republican. the opposite strategy is not only focus on 3-2-1 but keep broadening the battlefield. wisconsin, pennsylvania, iowa, colorado, nevada, new hampshire, minnesota. states that come in to play at one time or another. and so you would never want to be only have, one group of states you want as many alternatives as possible. insurance policies if you will. >> so, space cowboys you can stand down for a moment and crumple numbers. calling your sources. bret, it's 3-2-1 or it isn't. >> bret: there you go. very simple. thank you. the time for results is almost here.

>> clock is ticking down to 7:00 p.m. eastern time. polls will close in virginia and five other states. just 30 minutes later the critical battleground state of ohio, and north carolina will close. about to get very interesting. >> bret: plus, the ideal is one person one vote. the alternative is well, where things get complicated. up next, when the system does not work. when this special edition of "special report" continues. i know the name of eight princesses. i'm an expert on softball. and tea parties. i'll have more awkward conversations than i'm equipped for because i'm raising two girls on my own. i'll worry about the economy more than a few times before they're grown. but it's for them,

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>> megyn: welcome back to this special edition of america's election headquarters. it's election night. want to give you a look at some of our fancy tools we have going on and the lower third of your screen. we are getting raw vote totals in. the vote, the polls don't officially close in the states until 7:00, some of the polls have already closed. so we can give you a little information on new hampshire, indiana, and kentucky. you'll see those at the bottom of your screen, as we start to get the first reports of the actual vote. we have exit polls from earlier. but now we get the votes in as the polls start close. >> bret: all the states will close at 7:00. that is why we'll be able to

give you more then. >> megyn: we do the big reveal. we hope. >> bret: we hope? it's been said we vote, because we're a free people. we are free people because we vote. not everyone plays by the rules. senior correspondent eric shawn in cleveland with a look at problems already reported across the nation. >> reporter: across the country, problem piled up. >> totally confusing for people to find where the polling station is. people may not come to vote. >> reporter: in pennsylvania, the state republican party obtained a court order to get 75 election inspectors inside philadelphia polling stations. they say some were kicked out. and then there was this -- a mural. president obama. watching over voters for hours at one polling place in a school. >> only after complaints was it partially covered up. >> that is something i'd expect maybe in china. or russia. but not united states. that is common sense you don't

have, your president behind the polling. >> deputy secretary of the commonwealth shannon royer told fox news, "it's an absolute disgrace. election materials and election nearing inside the polling place are prohibited by state law. this can been interpreted as trying to influence voters inside the polling place. also in philadelphia, one member of the new black panthers party was back. in 2008, another carried a nightstick. but democratic poll watcher stood silently as we tried to get him to talk. >> have you been around a lot today? [ no response ] what is your purpose of being here? >> one election protection group reports receiving 40,000 cause of complaints nationwide. in ohio, these lawyers were handling frauds in the cuyahoga county board of elections where the officials vowed to watch for fraud. >> we ensure that all of our focus son all the details -- focus is on all the details. all the "i"s dotted and

"t"s crossed. >> that is eric shawn in cleveland. >> megyn: as we wait for the first results to roll in, including from the battleground state of virginia, both sides claiming the edge. >> we feel confident, we have the votes to win. it will depend whether the voters turn-out. i encourage everybody. on all sides. just to make sure that you exercise this precious right we have. that people fought so hard for us to have. i'm looking forward to the results. i expect that we will have a good night. >> tomorrow we begin the work. >> people are hoping that we see this from the nation's leaders and paul ryan andly do that, we'll get america back on track. i'm so optimistic. not just about the result of the election, but optimistic about what is ahead for america. >> megyn: bring in the panel. brit hume, the senior political analyst. juan williams, columnist with

the hill. kirsten powers for the daily beast. steve hayes, senior writer for stand stand. "weekly standard." brit, your thoughts? >> you keep asking me that. >> bret: easy question, brit. not even 7:00. >> i'm not sure knowing more than i did 24 hours ago. i did notice when martha reviewed the exit poll findings that romney was holding up pretty well among households with the government employee. that is important because we have virginia where the polls will close, a critical state for romney. important for the president. and it suggests the possibility at least that in places like articling top county, outside of washington, fair fax county, beyond arlington county. these are the areas that the democrats hope to do well to build up a big margin. if some of the households, government workers there obviously. washington suburbs, right? if romney is holing up well, it would at a minimum hold down the obama edge in that area. that might make a big difference in the outcome of virginia. that is about the best i can do for you. >> megyn: i'll take what i

can get. >> bret: juan, you heard karl and joe talking the 3-2-1 strategy. virginia early in the night. paints this picture, but it doesn't seem heading in to today that we were going to be able to call anything, anytime soon. once the polls close. >> no. but what we can say, it seems as if turn-out seems to be up a little bit. everybody is talking about the clogs at the polls and people turning out, the long lines. that is very optimistic i think. i think good news in large part for democrats in many of the close races we see that we see high level of turn-out. the question is, if you have the high level of turn-out, the assumption i'm working on, of course, you get more of president obama's constituencies. minorities, young people, closer to the 2008 model of turn-out. possible you have an highly energized, enthusiastic republican base, evangelicals

popping up in larger than expected numbers. >> megyn: kirsten, you look at the exit polls so far they talk about the economy and how important that issue is to so many americans. it seems so far. well, you tell me. put it in perspective. 39% believe the economy got better. but 59% say it's either the same or worse than it was. >> right. i don't think it is a big news flash people are not happy with the way the economy is going. but when you look at the xil polls you see they feel that barack obama is somebody who relates to them, more like them, understands them better. and that he was successful at painting romney as being somebody who has been out of touch rich guy. i would not under estimate that. that is very serious thing. if people feel that mitt romney is somebody who is not going to relate to their suffering and not care about it and maybe take care of rich people, i don't think it bodes well for romney. >> bret: steve, it's important to point out with the exit polls they come in waves. we get certain waves of

results. number one. number two, some people don't talk to interviewers when they leave the polling places. they just don't. >> right. so steve, if you say fig about the exit polls -- >> bret: discount it. >> [ laughter ] >> look, i think that, a good reminder. one thing that jumped out at me in the looking at the first wave of the exit polls, was the right track, wrong track number, close. 4651 in this first wave. we think the numbers are going to change. but for a campaign that has taken place against a backdrop of a wrong track number, you know, mid-to-high 60s, sometimes as high as 70. people thought the country was going in the wrong direction. if it's anywhere near what these numbers suggest it would be, that would be obviously very good news for the president. argument that things arethis improving slowly but they a in fact improving. right track, wrong track number like that would suggest that people, some people believed it. >> megyn: how important is that key, you know, he

understands people like me, he is connected to me, how important is that? >> i think it's very important to voters who are probably the kind of voters who are for him anyway. in other words, voters are saying who will fix the economy? who is going to get america growing are not thinking who is going to feel my pain? that is not what they worry about. they worry about a job. it always wondered about how important that number it was. rather have it going your way than not. but another number that come up in the exit polls that is relevant to this. the question of who is to blame for the bad economy? people still blame bush in significant percentage for that. i'm not sure that is the question. the question is barack obama, after all, was elected to fix the economy. who do they blame for the fact that economy is still bad? what do they think of the job he has done? you know, exit polls don't reveal that to us. >> in the first weigh, again, the caution that brit put in place, really have to guide us here. we have a very small window. but 40% think the economy is

getting better. that is a surprise. only -- and 30% think it is the same. 70% same or better. >> bret: it's early. thank you, panel. just about a half hour from the first state poll closings. battleground states of virginia, north carolina, ohio in the next hour. >> megyn: but first, we'll take you live to some of the battleground states where the presidency will be won or lost. this election night special continues.

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>> bret: we have been telling you for months even though americans vote from sea to shining sea, the race for president really comes down to just a handful of battleground states. so let's check in with our reporters at several of them. alicia acuna at the county clerk's office in denver, colorado. steve harrigan is in tampa, florida. steve brown is with vote counters in columbus, ohio. shannon bream at the republican watch party if des moines, iowa. good evening, shannon. >> reporter: hello, bret. well, republicans here in iowa are hoping that romney will pull off a somewhat unexpected win. there is something down ticket that could help him. in 2009, the state supreme court here legalized same-sex marriage. that motivated and mobilized conservatives and evangelical christians. they had three of the justices that signed on to the opinion removed. a fourth justice on the ballot. that is not all. control of the state senate is control by democrats. conservatives hope to win it back to give them control of the both state houses and

enabling them to pass legislation to been a the same-sex marriage. if the evident to get out the vote on the same-sex marriage issue is successful, it could help romney. secretary of state here says there have been very few complaints about the voting irregularities. the biggest complaint is vote whose didn't get the "i voted" sticker. take it now to steve brown in ohio. >> reporter: hey, shannon. yes, in ohio, the polls close in an hour. people are kind of settling in for what is anticipated to be a rather long night of counting nights in the rather narrowly divided state. but there is an early indicator to watch for. that will come early on. the early vote will be the first vote that you will probably see pop up on the screen. the early votes cast in person in the paper ballot. that favors the obama campaign, made it emphasis of the ohio campaign. the secretary of state in ohio said the turn-out will be the same in 2008. a lot of savvy political watchers. around 8:15 eastern time. taking a look at how big a

lead the early vote stake president obama. if the number is between 150,000 and 200,000, it may mean a good night for president. less than that could be as to-up. far less than that could be romney possibility here in state of ohio. go to florida and correspondent steve harrigan. >> reporter: thank you, steve. florida election officials are talking about a series of minor hiccups today for brow ward county. 700 absentee ballots were rejected because the voters failed to sign them. small incidents, too, around the state. power outals. phone lines out. overall, much smoother performance today on election day than we saw in the eight days of the early voting. in the early period, lines from four to seven hours in some places. enough for the floridateamic party to file a lawsuit to try to extend voting hours. 4.5 million people voted in florida early. both sides are trying to read what they can in the numbers.

the edge is for the registered democrats by 4%. but that is a smaller edge than four years ago. now to colorado, my colleague alicia acuna. >> thanks, steve. 2 million people voted here. that is according to the secretary of state office. i'm at the denver election division. this is where all of the ballots and the county of denver will be counted. this is not a traditional polling place. this is what is called a voter service center. this is where voters come if they have had the ballots mismarked, concerned maybe with something else or they are concerned they won't make it to the polling place on time. they can vote to participate in the federal election. these are considered the provisionm ballots and where they are dropped off from all over the county. they go through the process in the building of being verified. then they will also be flattened. if these are mail-in ballots to make it smoothly through the machine which will count the ballots, 400 amid.

in this room, very secure, they have a fish bowl, which at 9:00 eastern time, they will begin the tallying. throughout the state of colorado there are reports of long lines. also people who have been complaining they have been asked for i.d.es; which is not a law in the state of colorado. at 9:00 eastern time we're told they will report results immediately. bret? >> bret: thank you. >> megyn: quarantine room back there. >> fish bowl. >> megyn: with the jackets. bill hemmer is live at the billboard where the data will come in real-time and he take us through it. >> did you give bret permission to use the board? >> megyn: doesn't he make you proud? >> bret: thank you, bill. >> one night only. good evening to both of you. what i want to show you based on the battleground state and how the race is being fought out in a handful of states we zero in on 11 battleground states outlined in yellow. if you live in one of the state you know the eselection well on because you have seen the ads time and again for the past six months.

the you have to battleground states, what do they have in common? 2008 they were blue. florida down here where barack obama beat john mccain by 2-1/2 and 3 points. in 2004, a different story. george bush beat john kerry by five points down there in florida. similar story in ohio where you heard steve brown reporting in franklin county in columbus. george bush won by 118,000 votes in 2004. look at the flip in 2008. president obama winning that state by five points. similar out here in iowa, too. it went blue as well. by nine points over mccain after george bush won this barely. by a point over john mccain four years prior. out here in colorado, it went blue. this was major target for democrats. nine-point winner for president obama over senator mccain. look what happened in 2004. george bush, winner by five points. then in 2008, flipped to the president.

14-point swing. that is significant. anytime you get that. so we'll be watching the states throughout the entire night. as for the closing time, here is what you need to know right now. you are 23 minutes away from closing time here at 7:00 eastern time. keys to watch this hour. watch the margin in indiana. that was a state that the president won in 2008 by less than 30,000 votes. it was razor tight. republicans expected to take indiana back this year. we'll see if they do that, if they do that and what sort of margin. the big one here at 7:00, is virginia. 13 electoral votes. at 7:01 eastern time, literally, 22 minutes and 30 some odd seconds from now you will see various counties and cities in virginia start to fill in. red is republican. blue is democrat. we'll start to get an idea how virginia is shaping up tonight. from the bill/bret board. back to you. >> megyn: bill hemmer at

billboard. charles krauthammer coming up in a minute. we have this. >> bret: with the miracle of videotape, i will give you a tour of the fox facilities, really all of them but we start in studio "j," our home base for the evening. this big board is called the launch pad. we have a lot of information on the board throughout the night. you will see in the corner the balance of power, the u.s. senate and u.s. house. we'll have foxnews.com, info. the next poll closings. how close we are to that. over here, a big map about all of the states as they close. you will see them red and blue and the electoral count. plus live reporters on the back standing by and the live reports. in the back of the studio, you have seen them, chris wallace, joe trippi and karl rove. right here. this is their home base. they will dig down in the numbers. that is where they do their analysis. over here, the billboard. we call it that, because it's bill hemmer's home throughout the election. he will look at all the states

digging down in to them. virginia, big one throughout this election. we'll dig in to those. then, you keep seeing the panel. this is their home base. the panel will be sitting right here throughout the night. we'll have a lot of panelists and guests who visit us. throughout the evening. our home base, this lovely clear glass december sack where you and i will be. now, let's take a tour, give you some perspective of the other fox properties right next door. fox broadcast. c'mon. >> okay. this is studio "h." home base to shepard smith. where fox broadcast is coming from tonight. getting ready for studio "b." you can see they are pulling out the cables. shep needs a lot of cable to do his show. this will be the home base for fox broadcast. a lot of guests. covered in this studio. up next, control room with a stop along the way. c'mon! throughout the building, there

are fox radio positions. this is just one of them. this is near the studios. there will be a fox radio broadcast throughout the night. you have rich johnson and heather nowart and jeff birmbaum who will be broadcasting with the information on fox radio. go to control room now. this is the control room. this is kind of our master control. these are the men and women who make us look good. for some reason they make megyn look better than i loom this is where everything is controlled. all of the video inputs. all of the stuff that you see on the screen. all the little screens. we'll be having a lot of things happening all at once. when we are in the middle of the show, like we are right now, there will be people talking and there will be things going on in this room. hopefully, we will be able to bring it to you right away. the latest result, because you can see, a lot of stuff happens in the control room. okay, next up.

we are going to stop by the fox.com area. let's go. before we get to dot-com i want to show you the decision desk. these are the guys that make the calls, projections. pop in here. ahh, guys. >> hey, bret. >> bret: this is the decision desk area, glass-enclosed area. looks like a fish bowl but a lot of information that will come out of this room. this is where the guys will make the projections tonight. now, a lot of them are not here. that is because they're in what is called quarantine. it's not because they are sick. they are actually guarn teegarid getting the exit poll information by this point in show we should have been briefed on. it's going to be interesting throughout the night. but these guys in this room will make our calls tonight. okay, now, the dot-com. let's go!

televisions in the elevators. this way. this is studio "e." this is home base to fox news.com. where they will be broadcasting there. they will have a panel on this desk. over on the fox and friends couch, the friendly curvy couch over there, delay be doing a lot of foxnews.com broadcasting throughout the night. it's really the best way to watch, is if you watch on fnc or fbn and have the computer open that is a great thing. you get both things. foxnews.com will be coming out of this studio. now we go to fbn. here we go. watch your step. ♪ ♪ >> bret: no commercials in the television elevators.

okay. this is fbn studios. this is their home base for the election. they are actually on the air. we'll try to be quiet. shh. okay. you're on the air. tracy and laurie this is where neil cavuto will be broadcasting from. i'll do the golf announcing voice as they're on the air right now but tonight will be exciting. all throughout the fox platforms. megyn, back to you. >> megyn: that was highly amusing. i like that soft voice. >> bret: you did it at the debate. i figured i should weigh in. >> megyn: as for me looking better than you on the air, that's not true. we both have the same lighting. we have special tonight, trust me when i tell you they don't give us a special night. they're eye lights. in the desk. ladies we need to have these follow us everywhere. bret and i are trying not to -- see the difference? see the difference? with the eye light. without the eye light.

takes off like ten years. that is what i would have been featuring had i done the behind the scenes. >> bret: i was panting there, as if you couldn't tel tell. long walk. a lot of facilities. >> megyn: showed off the best. couple studios we might not want to include. >> bret: moving on. >> well, folks you can also watch us and get even more information if you want to log on to foxnews.com. good way to enhance viewing experience tonight. we will have full real-time data and results if for house and the senate races. also, by county for the presidential race. exit poll data. so you know we go through it so quickly sometimes on the air it doesn't sink in. look at it on fox news.com while we talk about it with the multiple live video streams and, of course, live reporting. want to get some thoughts now on what we can expect this evening from syndicated columnist charles krauthammer from washington. good evening, charles. >> good evening. well, let me just say one thing we can predict unequivocally is that barring

a hanging chad or two here and there by tomorrow, we can be sure that our long national nightmare will be over. and that means the election. you know, we have been talking about these exit polls. i'm not sure how much they add. if you are on either side, take solace for obama, of course, it's the fact that the wrong track number which was pretty high is a little bit lower now than it was. but these are the early returns. i suspect it will be up there in the 60% range by the end of the evening. for romney, there is something interesting which i think brit alluded to. i was also struck by the fact that in the virginia numbers, and virginia is one of the two really key states here. the other being of course ohio. government workers, majority went for romney. 51%. i'm not sure you would have expected. now they are concentrated in the northern part of the state. which is what obama will depend on. to carry them through.

i think if you already have romney with majority of the government workers that bodes well for romney. i think either side can look at the numbers. they're so preliminary and they are so vague in their question that i'm not sure it points anywhere right now. i think all we know it will be over tomorrow. as of now, tight as we thought it was yesterday. >> bret: charles, i'm not sure we really know that. i mean, some of heese states are so tight it may not be over tomorrow. but you never know. >> barring a hanging chad or two, yes. of course. there is always that. we can have another nightmare. >> bret: you talk about virginia and it's early in the night. they will tell us a lot. other states throughout the evening really will paint this battle tonight about the path. talk about it yesterday. >> correct. >> bret: the path for romney to 270. >> look, everybody, of course, after we get the first wave of states, florida and virginia and new hampshire will look at ohio, going to have that

seven. but i remind you that ohio is a slightly odd state because of the fact that the auto industry, bail-out is fact that it stands out there. obama has poured in so much negative ads, starting in the spring and summer. even if ohio doesn't go romney, you have the firewall. that's wisconsin, iowa, and colorado. you take those three, you don't need ohio, you don't need new hampshire. you don't need anything other than the south. so, i think that's a second path. it's out there. but that won't start to come in until 9:00. >> megyn: charles, thank you. >> a pleasure. >> megyn: a life look now at the campaign headquarters for both candidates. just about 10 minutes until all polls are closed in six states. the results as they come n realtime. >> bret: complete analysis from our political team, including former presidential candidate mike huckabee. laura ingraham and, yes,

mr. bill o'reilly. live from america's election headquarters. music is a universal language. but when i was in an accident... i was worried the health care system spoke a language all its own with unitedhealthcare, i got help that fit my life. information on my phone. connection to doctors who get where i'm from. and tools to estimate what my care may cost. so i never missed a beat. we're more than 78,000 people looking out for more than 70 million americans. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare.

>> bret: we are minutes away from the first statewide poll closings the six states that will shut their doors for voting. first georgia, indiana,

kentucky, south carolina, vermont and virginia. at' 7:30. three more. the biggest prize of all, ohio. the other two are north carolina and west virginia. i do want to show you quickly on the bottom of the screen, megyn, you talked about it, it is the ticker and the votes you are seeing in there now are the polls already closed in some of those states, new hampshire, indiana, some of them closed at 6:00 p.m. but the entire states don't close so that's why we had the 7:00 p.m. closing. >> that number sort of underneath me right there is the percentage of vote that's been counted so far and who has got what percent of the votes. so you can see, for example, there in indiana 3 percentage has been counted and well, just changed. that's how you follow that ticker if that's helpful. this is the first election in american history where social media plays a major role in the campaigns and people like us are paying more and more attention than ever to what you are saying. jenna lee will be watching that for us tonight. she tells us what is happening on twitter.

>> a lot going on tonight, megyn. like peeking into the national conversation in realtime. social media, a key strategy used by both campaigns and one out of five of us say we're going to use sites like twitter to tell everybody how we are voting. we have a special partnership with twitter tonight. we can give you a lot of that information, a lot of that information in realtime. here is a little bit what's happening on twitter related to the election. right now election-related tweets are soaring. every minute by the time i get done speaking more than 18,000 tweets talking about the election will happen. and overall today, there is more than 9 million tweets that are also election-related. for some context, the most tweeted political event ever was the first presidential debate. that hit 20 million tweets. so he we are about half way there. we don't even have any results yet. this is what people are talking about when we are are talking about the election. on the top here you can see the economy, the number one issue. 32% followed by foreclosure policy. have you taxes, energy were in the environment and education. which candidates are being

mentioned the most. the obama/biden ticket on the top there a lot not mentioning any candidates at all. a quarter of which talking about romney/ryan. quick note on this, this is not positive or negative. these are just mentions. we have no idea if people are mentioning these candidates in positive or negative ways. as you said, i'm going to be keeping track of twitter trends and topics and some state-by-state analysis. log on to foxbusiness.com/ -- foxnews.com/politics. jenna lee some girl in paris is getting really annoyed. >> megyn: are you kidding? loving it. >> that's true. >> megyn: bret baier. the twitter war between us in over. >> bret: it's over. >> megyn: i receive. >> bret: she won. minutes away from the battleground state of virginia closing, the commonwealth of virginia. let's bring back the panel. we have been focusing a lot,

brit, about virginia. but as we talked about with charles, it's so much broader than that. what about what we're seeing about the electorate tonight and early, the turn out we're antidotally getting the turnout is high. we don't really know what the electorate looks like. >> bret: we also don't know, for example, where, for example, there is a high turnout in what had been democratic areas. whether those people are all going to vote for the democratic. normally that's a pretty good indication. this is an unusual year. we have seen unusual things all through this year. i think the thing to watch is the independents and how they break. and as we get more exit poll data plus some raw data, we have a better feel for that romney needs a distinct majority of the independents to win. if he gets them, there is is a very good chance he will win. the simplest way to slice and dice the electorate is if you win nearly all your party and you probably. will both candidates will probably do that, and you win a distinct, i'm not talking

about a slight but a distinct majority of the independents, you are going to win the election. if we are looking for one thing throughout the course of the election that's a good thing to keep an eye on. better sense of the exit polls obviously focused on the senate race. some of the house races, in the senate one of the biggest races that's gotten a lot of attention is this elizabeth scott brown in massachusetts. how important is that race tonight it's a telling race. if you recall, megyn, she left the administration in a the midst of a big fight confirmation to be a consumer surrogate for the nation and republicans wouldn't confirm her. she decided she was going to go out and run, and run against a man who is really sort of a moderate republic. and, again, they there are not that many moderate republicans. she has managed to make him into a surrogates if you will for all republics in a very

blue state, massachusetts, you are running for ted kennedy's seat. >> bret: kirsten, there are are some races that coincide with get-out-the vote efforts. tommy thompson raced there. republicans are hoping he can he pull off a win there and romney is hoping he can pull off wisconsin. >> yeah. i mean overall in the senate we are probably not going to see much of a shift, which is interesting when we think back about a year ago. people are thinking democrats were defending so many seats and they were going to be in trouble. and elizabeth warren seat is important to people because she is kind of this liberal hero and i think people are feeling she is a couple points up and have an expectation she going to win or going to be very disappointed if she doesn't. >> megyn: please stand by we will get your thoughts in a minute and several times throughout the night. >> bret: several times. >> megyn: first race called of the night when the polls close in a couple minutes. >> bret: michael barone, laura ingraham and, yes, bill o'reilly. many, many more.

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>> megyn: we are just seconds away from the first poll closings of the night. good evening, everyone, i'm megyn kelly. >> bret: i'm bret baier, as the clock ticks down to 7:00 p.m. eastern, polls are set to close in six states, including the battleground, the commonwealth of virginia. and it's 13 electoral votes. at the bottom of the hour, the big one, ohio. and north carolina, they also close. ohio by most accounts the most crucial and critical state in this contest. we talked about ohio, megyn, since the beginning of this race. >> megyn: this campaign has been going on for years. billions of dollars invested. and all for this moment. now, finally, we're going to

get some results and we do have some for you. >> bret: we do have some calls. >> megyn: not all but some coming. in we have to wait until 7:00 p.m. to bring them to you and we are almost there. you can see the countdown on your screen. stand by. >> bret: so exciting. it's 7:00 p.m. on the east coast and polls are now closed in half a dozen states including the crucial swing state of virginia, the commonwealth where the race is excruciatingly close. how close? fox news exit polls show the race so tight that we cannot characterize either mitt romney or president obama even with a slight lead. much less a win. we'll have to wait for the actual votes, probably a long time for those vote tallies to come in before we can project a winner. >> megyn: we can say nothing about virginia except. this it's one of a dozen battleground states including ohio where the polls close in 30 minutes.

and florida, where the polls close in an hour that we will be watching very closely tonight. because those states will almost certainly determine who will occupy the white house for the next four years. >> bret: let's get to some states where we can project winners and losers. fox news can now project that mitt romney will carry kentucky, a coal-rich, socially conservative state. that president obama never really contested. not a surprise there. >> megyn: fox can also project that governor romney will win indiana. which president obama won back in 2008. romney is also ahead in georgia. >> bret: and in south carolina, but it is too soon to call those states, fox can project that president obama will win vermont, a liberal bassian that saw no campaigning from either side. it carries three electoral votes. remember the key to winning the presidency. the men have to carry 270 electoral votes. that's the big number. romney may be ahead early in this hour in that early tally,

the lead will swing back and forth throughout the night. and we'll be watching it every step of the way. >> megyn: settle in because obviously everybody is waiting for virginia at this hour but we never really expected that we were going to be able to call it this soon in the evening and, sure enough, we can't. let's bring in our panel fox news senior political analyst brit hume. columnist with the hill juan williams. kirsten powers and senior writer for "the weekly standard" steve haste. -- hayes. your thoughts on not being able to call virginia at this hour. >> not a surprise. virginia was a handful of states going to be close even though virginia pushes its results in pretty efficiently by most accounts. if you take a step back and you look at this race, this sort of the big picture of the race, what's interesting is how often the conventional wisdom has been wrong. have you had sort of a media elite that have made certain arguments or certain assumptions that have been true maybe in past elections but haven't proven true this time. i'm thinking of things like, you know, debates don't

matter. obviously the romney campaign sees the first debate as a potential turning point in this race. we had this idea that mitt romney would never take a risk with his vice presidential pick, that he was going to go safe. he had to go safe. he did, in fact, take a risk. then, once he took that risk, we were told that medicare would be the defining issue because democrats were going to demagogue paul ryan's budget reforms and medicare plans. that didn't actually happen, looking at the earl i didn't exit polls. so there has been a lot of conventional wisdom so far that's been upended looking at the early exit polls. >> bret: this is such a great pivot because twice i have talked about the exit polls and how there are problems with the exit polls. [ laughter ] >> megyn: poor steve. >> bret: real clear politics average of right track, wrong track is 41, 54. the exit polls have it at 46, 52. so with all the talk about, you know, whether the polls are right or wrong, the

average is a little bit different than what we're seeing in these exit polls, at least early. >> that's a function of early, i think. >> bret: right. >> that's one we need to watches through the course of the evening. here is another exit poll number that was interesting to me. hurricane sandy, fully 42% of those responding to this first round in the exit polling said it was important, it was a reason, one of the reasons for their vote. that's more than one might have thought hurricane sandy didn't effect 42% of the country. those people are going by and large for obama pretty big. the question then arises, okay, well how many people were for him anyway? we don't know. it's sort of interesting. what it tells us, we can't tell. exit polls can only tell you so much. it's interesting. >> megyn: we have been talking about how these exit polls are not necessarily to be trusted entirely. it would be helpful if we explain that a little bit. brit, you were on the air back in 2004 when we got information in and back then they were saying that john

kerry was way ahead, he was way ahead. >> brit: he was winning virginia and all these places. people are, we had the meeting with our decision team which i can thought then and think now is the best in the business. they were looking over the exit poll data and our pollster then said the undecides have broken for john kerry and some of us, bill crystal and i remember in particular raised the question that there seemed exorbitant number of women in the sample more than you would expect there to be. and he acknowledged that that was so but he thought he said even so, you know, we averaged this down and it's so big that he couldn't -- the bush can't make it up. well, we were very careful. we were so worried about the exit poll we were pretty careful what we said on the air that night. meanwhile bob shrum the great speech writer for senator kerry was congratulating saying may i be the first to you will can a you mr. president? oops. >> megyn: so awful for kerry.

>> bret: final thing, do you want one come back, steve? >> no, i agree with you entirely. the exit polls really are not trustworthy. >> bret: at that i think we should move on to martha with some exit polls. don't you think? [ laughter ] what a good intro. >> meaningless. all the exit polls. we do have some tremendous interesting stuff that's coming through here bret and megan. what i can tell you is that it is neck and neck in the state of virginia right now. here is some the reasons why and i should mention that we're also including the constitution party candidate virgil good in the instances where he registers which there are few. let's take a look at virginia independent voters really essential issue tonight, of course, is how they will will go. they narrowly went for president obama who was the first to win virginia in quite a long time back in 2008 for democratic candidate. they are breaking strongly for mitt romney tonight. also there has been a lot said in this election about whether mr. romney can relate to the middle class. interestingly, romney's support in virginia stretches

from moderate income, those around $50,000 and up and all the way up through the 100,000 plus group as well. and, in 2008, seniors in virginia went for john mccain over barack obama. they are sticking with republicans this time around as well as far as we can tell at this point in the evening. also, women, a lot said about who can sway the women's vote in this election. they have clearly been a target group for the obama campaign in virginia. they did rallies in fairfax, virginia, that were specifically targeted at women voters. they seem to be breaking for obama so far at this point in the evening as well. moderates in the old dominion siding with president obama as they did in 2008. young voters are strongly for the president as well, although we can't make a judgment about turnout of the youth vote based on any of this at this point. and also, in ohio, the most hotly contest ited state. let's take a look at ohio here for a moment. the bailout of u.s. automakers huge issue during the course of this campaign. voters who approve of the bailout are strongly backing

president obama. those who disapprove not surprisingly going big for mitt romney tonight. that's just a look at where we are right now as we go through the most recent wave of numbers, tons of information in here. lots more coming up in a little while. back to you guys. >> megyn: all right, martha, thank you. >> bret: thank you, martha. >> megyn: you will be able to see all the information that you need at the bottom of the screen in our election ticker. right now just one line presidential race with the state-by-state raw vote underneath. we can go to the two line moted with the presidential race on top and the house and the senate races on bottom. and information overload comes when we add the third line with president obama on top, house and senate races on the second and third lines. and the bottom of the screen will tell you all. also, you can just watch us and go on foxnews.com and consume it all at once. >> bret: as states start to be called in this map, it will start filling in. and there you see each state will be colored by the candidate red, blue, that wins. red for governor romney, of

course, blue for president obama. the states fox considers swing states are highlighted in yellow and on the right side of the screen, there is the tally for electoral votes. candidate, again, needs 270 to win the race for the white house. that's the magic number. >> megyn: they are on their way. it is 7:09 here in the east. we are just getting started tonight, folks. coming up, analysis from the best of the fox news political team. carl rove, chris wallace, joe trippi. >> bret: also with us, mike huckabee, dana perino, sarah palin, laura ingraham, bob beckel and liz cheney, plus, bill o'reilly and greta van susteren. >> megyn: as we watch the results come in tonight live from america's election headquarters. well, if it isn't mr. margin.

mr. margin? don't be modest, bob. you found a better way to pack a bowling ball. that was ups. and who called ups? you did, bob. i just asked a question. it takes a long time to pack a bowling ball. the last guy pitched more ball packers. but you... you consulted ups. you fod a better way. that's logistics. that's margin. find out what else ups knows. i'll do that. you're on a roll. that's funny. i wasn't being funny, bob. i know.

>> megyn: welcome back, folks. we told you virginia is too close to call. in about 15 minutes we are expecting the polls in ohio to also close. bill hemmer is live at the billboard with what to watch for there. hey, bill. >> bill: you know, megyn, i think you are exactly right. if there is a state that has got a heaping of attention in the past six months it is the

battleground state of ohio with its 18 electoral votes on the line. there is a very good reason for that. it is difficult to see how mitt romney, not impossible but more difficult to win the white house without taking the 18 electoral votes in ohio. no republic has ever done it by the way. so, on the map behind us here, let's go in ohio. what i want to show you in about in about 17 minute grs now we should -- minutes from now. we should see red republic, blue democrat start to fill in counties. i will take you back to 2008 and show you what ohio did then. when barack obama won this state by five states over john mccain. where did barack obama do well? very well up in cleveland, cuyahoga county, akron and canton, ohio as well. wood county and lucas county over here in toledo. franklin county, the middle city here in columbus. the capital city of montgomery county is is dayton and hamilton county is cincinnati in the southwest. so barack obama did very well

in the cities throughout the entire state. the keys to watch tonight, if mitt romney has a chance at winning ohio, we should know this early on, once hamilton county starts to check in, why is that so critical? hamilton county had not gone democratic since 1964 until barack obama won that county by 8 points four years ago. it went blue when it was so red for 40 long years. another key to watch here up here in the northeast, a lot of people grew up in cincinnati, hamilton county have moved to the surrounding counties here where the suburbs have now moved away from the city. this is warren county. look at the vote margin from 2008 with john mccain getting 68% of the vote. seems like a great and healthy number, right? look what george bush did in that same county in 2004. he picked up 72% of the vote. mitt romney needs to be around these george bush numbers of 2004 in order to offset what we are seeing in the northern part of the state. up here in the northern part

of -- come back to 2008 right now. and cuyahoga county, this is is absolutely mind-blowing when you find -- if you are a democrat and you are running for president in ohio, where do you go for votes? cuyahoga county, 70% to 30% over john mccain. but the raw numbers is what blows your mind here. that's a difference of about 258,000 votes. well, the state overall went for barack obama in ohio in 2008 by right around 260, 261,000 votes. can you go to cuyahoga county and get all kinds of votes as a democratic candidate which explains why mitt romney made one last stop there today in ohio. and just on the poll closings over here to point this out, at 7:30 you are going to see ohio and then we will start to focus on north carolina. but the buckeye state should start to fill n a couple of minutes from now. megyn, bret, back to you. >> megyn: bill, thanks. >> bret: it's just much smoother when he does it.

>> megyn: you were right there. you are too tough on yourself. >> bret: let's go to steve brown live in columbus, ohio. steve? >> >> yeah, we were checking in with folks around the area that bill was talking about butler county. that's a county that senator portman said he was going to watching closely as an indicator not because it's a county that a county barack obama has a chance to pick off john mccain won that by 61% of the vote. as bill pointed out george bush four years earlier than that picked it off at 65%. there is a threshold of performance that the romney campaign has to hit out there. and it looks like that's going to have to be it. because we are not hearing numbers in and around those colored counties of cincinnati suggesting that the turnout will be higher. as a matter of fact, it does appear that we are very much in store for a turnout that is very close to what it is in 2008. john husted said that, just statewide that his guess was around 5.7, 5.8, which is what it was in 2008. you talk to the folks down in butler county they say yeah, turnout was strong.

early voting was 10% up. they said overall they think they will hit the number they had last time which was 175,000. that means that mitt romney has to improve performance over what john mccain had in some of those collar counties that went republic. that's a high bar to clear. if he had been able to double that or, you know, go at that two-prong way where he increased the turnout and increased his performance, that gives him the better shot at it. so now it looks like it's just down to performance in those counties. county by county and trying to pick up votes to offset what it is that barack obama will pick up in cuyahoga and overall with the early vote as well. bret? >> bret: steve, thank you. >> megyn: now we want to get back to virginia where one clue to the presidential contest may be found in the results of the hotly contested senate race between two former governors running against each other. democrat tim cane and republic george allen. at this moment, fox news exit polls show that race also is too close to call.

they are trying to replace the retiring democratic senator jim webb. too close to call at this moment. >> bret: another hot senate race richard mourdock neck and neck by the senate seat being vacated by richard lugar of indiana. mourdock upset him in the general primary but he upset him in the general election comment rape and abortion democrats used against him. i want to point out that is based on the exit polling. you see 6% of the expected vote in on the screen there we are getting the raw vote total in as well as the exit polling and that's where these calls will come from when we can project winners. >> megyn: fox news also projecting now that liberal vermont senator bernie sanders, independent who caucuses with the democrats will turn back a challenge by republic john john mcgovern, he is a self-described socialist bernie sanders and peter will beat his republic challenger randy broke.

>> bret: in indiana republic mike pence is vying with john craig in the contest to replace outgoing republic governor mitch daniels but right now it's too soon to project a winner in that race. >> megyn: very early. >> bret: we do want to take a look at the electoral map next door. >> megyn: got some maps there. they have done it for us. can you see that right now. mitt romney has 19. president obama has 3. we are still adding up some of the early states and not yet ready to make some calls. but we will get there and we are also going to get to ohio in 10 minutes and maybe, maybe have some numbers. >> bret: from ohio? >> megyn: no. we won't. we may have some numbers in some lower races. we are watching the results come in and the polls are about to close in three states. not just ohio but also the critical swing state of north carolina plus our all-star panel is next live from america's election headquarters. stay with us.

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more than 70 million americans. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. >> bret: welcome back to america's election headquarters. we want to bring in a special guest, michael barone, senior political analyst for "the washington examiner." michael, welcome, we are obviously reading the exit polls, second wave coming in. your take on the evening, what you are seeing and kind of what -- how you -- what you make of it. >> well, bret, we are seeing -- i'm trying to compare sort of the exit polls are some of the actual data from counties that are coming. in i mean, the first ones we got were from indiana and kentucky where the eastern time zone counties came in at 6:00 p.m. eastern. those show pretty big victories for mitt romney. if you look at -- i took a look at the absentee vote in

two florida counties. indian river county below the space center and nassau county very conservative county north of jacksonville on the georgia border. absentee vote there, mitt romney's percentages are just slightly better than bush got, george w. bush got in 2004 when he was carrying florida. they are a few points higher than john mccain got in the county as a whole, including the absentee vote in 2008 when he failed to carry florida and barack obama won it. so, we're looking through tea leaves like that and hoping -- waiting for avalanche of tea leaves to come. >> megyn: anything interesting in virginia? >> the virginia numbers have not been coming in yet. i expect them in almost momentarily. >> megyn: talking about from the exit polling in virginia we were told that the independents who had broken for barack obama first time around are breaking significantly for mitt romney this time around. i think martha said it was 59% romney, 38% for obama so far

on the early wave. >> well, independents breaking for romney is what we have seen in most state polls and most national polls. so, maybe the romney voters came home from work and went to vote, whatever it is. you know, that one woo comport more with what we have seen in the polling. >> megyn: is there any way of engaging intensity at this point. >> the way to look at intensity is to look at the vote totals who is coming out and comparing them to past elections. we got a couple of bench marks here in 2008 and 2004 with different parties prevailing so we can make some measurement of what is happening. >> bret: is governor romney outperforming john mccain for example in virginia and other states he needs to win? >> he seems to -- my sense from the data i'm getting in is that he is outperforming john mccain. the question is is he outperforming john mccain enough. is he probably outperforming him in all -- in the target states that we are looking at and fragmentary returns.

virginia, indiana and kentucky. will it be enough? not clear. >> bret: what you are looking at most in the next half hour? we will have ohio closing here at 7:30. >> i'm going to be looking at florida numbers and going to be looking at virginia numbers in line with megyn's question because virginia tends to report fairly early. those polls close at 7:00 p.m. they have got a pretty fast system in many things. i think that northern virginia vote which is the democratic or was in 2008, the democratic bassian for barack obama won't come in until fairly late. >> bret: just to explain it for folks taking the exit poll numbers and comparing it with the raw vote total that comes in and saying what's the difference between these two and calculating where the exit poll was wrong? >> yeah. and our experts on the decision desk are doing some things sta tisz particularly similar -- analogous to that. they are finding the w.p.e.

>> bret: we're getting in the weeds here. >> basically the difference, the discrepancy between how the exit poll -- how the actual precinct where they conducted the exit poll voted and what the exit poller gave in. and that helps them to evaluate the exit poll for the 60 or 90 places in a state where it was conducted and how much of an error there is and how much to discount the result to see if we're 99.6% confident that we can call a state. >> megyn: how long does it take to actually count the vote? early on we have to do this weird, you know, calculation where we say exit poll data plus actual raw vote. in a state for virginia do they count votes quickly? should we know quickly what the actual vote tally is. >> they count them fairly quickly in virginia by 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. eastern. sometimes those big jurisdictions where lots of votes are cast and where a big democratic or a big republic margin could make the difference, sometimes they are the last ones to report. cuyahoga county, ohio has been

famous for that. and lake county, indiana, gary, that's one that likes to hold out until, you know, how many votes do you have? how many votes do you need? >> bret: paint the picture for somebody just tuning in. where is this race right now? michael barone looking at it. >> this is a very close race. we are looking at early poll closing states like virginia, florida, which most of the state closes at 7:00 the central time zone portion at 8:00. very close to ohio. looks to be very close. so we are call celebrating our exit -- callally calibrating -- >> megyn: is there anything we should be reading into the fact that these states are so close. virginia is close. probably ohio will wind up being -- this early in the evening should would he be reading anything into that? >> brit: i don't think so. i will say this about it.

given the conditions in the country, given the fact that we do not have a robust recovery four years after barack obama was inaugurated or elected and given the fact that, you know, we have had difficulties on the world scene most recently with the problems in libya. given the fact that obama care, the president's proudest achievement in his own way of looking at things remains unpopular, one might have thought that the fund mental to this election would have given any reasonable challenger a leg-up. i would say that a couple things about this. the feeling that people have about barack obama that is he a hero and historic figure and, i think people -- we're finding that people really don't want to let go of that, a great many people. we're also finding that the obama team anticipating certainly in the wake of 2010 but even before that, perhaps, that this was going to be a very difficult election have built a real machine to try to get out their vote and try to make this a close race. so, based on all that we knew coming into tonight i'm not surprised it's close.

if you looked back a couple years you might have looked ahead and thought it would be easier for the challenger than it has proved to be. it doesn't mean that the president is going to win. it means the president has made a race of it it. >> bret: you can see the evidence of the effect of the early ads about bain capital, corporate raider the charge. the negative ads against governor romney. >> i would read something in this if exit polls are right. we have to keep couching it with that the numbers we got for women were 52%, to 47%. it was 53%, 46% in 2008. he is holding with women. we have to wait and see how many white men are turning out which he actually got 51% of white men last time around. i would say that mitt romney, he has to win virginia. and you have to remember this was a formerly red state really. this is a state that barack obama turned last time around. when you have an economy the way that you have right now in a state that really shouldn't be that friendly to him even

though there are item graphic shifts, i'm surprised that he is doing as well as he is. >> bret: all right, panel. thank you. >> megyn: we'll be back to them early and off. but, first, 7:30 on the east coast. it will be in five seconds. and we do have poll closings now in three more states, including ohio. perhaps the most crucial toss-up state in the nation. fox news exit polls show that mitt romney and president obama are running neck and neck in the buckeye state. how important is ohio? consider this: in the last century only twice has anyone won the presidency without winning this heartland state. tonight, democrats and republicans are again convinced that the most likely path to the presidency runs through the state that many consider a microcosm of the nation, ohio. >> bret: it is also too soon to say who will win another important state where polls just closed. north carolina. remember. president obama carried the tarheel state in 2008 which he

-- when he was senator obama. we will have to wait for more votes to be counted. actual vote total before we can project a winner in north carolina. >> megyn: fox news can project a winner in west virginia where, as expected, mitt romney will claim that state's five electoral votes. although the mountain state has a democratic majority. the president's policies on energy and social issues are unpopular there. >> bret: back with the panel. steve, one place where the obama campaign did not do the negative ad rush was pennsylvania. they thought pennsylvania was in the bag. they didn't put a lot of those ads like they did in ohio. and now it looks like pennsylvania is a race. >> could be somewhat competitive the interesting thing is the republic didn't think pennsylvania was competitive or gettable. you had both candidates on the presidential level saying we want hands off. i talked to people with what happened in pennsylvania. the romney team and the rnc was a month ago so sure that

pennsylvania wasn't going to be competitive they sent one of their top officials to ohio and said go to ohio and help us get out the vote there that's where the fight is really going to be. then you had a series of polls that were done by the state republic party a couple public polls which showed the race very close. and that person from ohio sent back to pennsylvania. it looked like it was going to be a race. then the republicans and their outside groups showered the state with money, some $12 million in advertising money and we have seen, especially over the past week this rush of ads on pennsylvania television. >> bret: what does it tell you, michael barone, that north can't be called at this hour? >> well, it tells us that president obama has not probably -- probably not lost huge ground. that was a state he carried by 50% to 49%, bret, four years ago. and, you know, he had hoped to make it competitive. he hoped that, you know, the bourgeoisying -- burgeoning.

the triangle area near raleigh, would put him over. polling has been disappointing for him. remember, we are not ready to call states until we are looking at 99.6% certainty. and so we want to hold off in many cases until we see what the actual votes are coming in. the decision desk has had enough experience to know that's a good idea when the likelihood that the exit poll number fits that statistical model with 99.6% certainty, when it's less than that. >> bret: we would rather be right. >> yeah, let's be right about this. >> megyn: as we expected ohio is too close to call, talk about the auto bailout and what we are seeing now in the exit polls with respect to that important issue. >> just overwhelming that, and, again, this comes back to how you paint your opponent and making this a choice election as opposed to a

simple referendum, megyn on president obama's stewardship of the economy. according to these exit polls, if you were in favor of the auto bailout, you are overwhelmingly support president obama. and, again, what's telling here is in the exit polls, people say obama cares about people like me. and, that's, you know, that's a very important sentiment to have if you are asking someone for their vote. now, the contrary instinct is and again you see this in the poll is a values question, sharing values. that again, speaks to the potential for the evangelical vote to come out for mitt romney. they see romney sharing those values. i might add the strong leadership, strong leadership, strong vision seems to favor romney. >> megyn: all right, panel. stand by. thank you. >> bret: let's head over to chris wallace, "fox news sunday" anchor and his special guest in the back, carl and joe. >> thanks so much, bret. we have got 34 minutes of returns. are you ready to call virginia yet? [ laughter ] >> i think we have got returns

in two counties. two jurisdictions. one of them is not even a county, so, no. incidentally it's vigil goode not good. >> i will keep that in mind if i ever mention his name during the night. one question i have. virginia was the reddest of red states. it had not gotten gone for a democrat since 1964. l.b.j. and of course it went for obama famously in 2008. why is it now such a hard pull for a republic? >> its just changed demographically so much. the population up north has grown and become, i think, very liberal. there are pockets of moderation but it's a pretty liberal part of the state. that's where the population growth has been. you know, people forget but virginia was the first state in the country to elect an african-american governor in 1989, doug wilder. a lot of pride there and it's

a new coalition. it's not the southern state it used to be. >> i was surprised in 2004 that john kerry didn't make a bid for it. it's not only northern virginia that's growing. you have a lot of business coming to richmond, chester field in the center of the state. but the biggest population center is down here in the tide water. you have a lot of military families. >> virginia beach and norfolk. >> hampton roads, chesapeake. a lot of military families that come and go and industry. you have the largest shipyards in america there making military craft there primarily. heavily unionized workforce and historically significant african-americans. >> chris: do you agree this is a red state turning blue? >> this is a purple state that the democrats finally worked on but it also has countervailing changes. down here in the southwest this has historically been very democrat territory. a lot of coal country down there. that state is going the opposite direction. northern virginia is developing into two northern

virginias, the inner ring of the suburbs, arlington, alexandria and inside the beltway. that's becoming more democrat. and then the excerpts at lou done county, fairfax, stafford. >> chris: i don't know if this is literally the case, but you are the man in 2004 credited with kind of discovering the exerbs phenomenon. you worked them around the country explain what they're. >> the places that are further away where, they are not the traditional suburbs. they tend to have light manufacturing or office parts where people can work but people also commute long distances into the center city in this case washington, d.c. because they like the schools. they get more land and house for their money. >> chris: joe, as you look at virginia and that's something we are going to be looking at it appears all night, how are we going to know? how are you going to know whether romney is overperformingor underperforming the same with barack obama. >> how done county, how does that prepare. compared it to 2008.

fairfax county up north again another place we have to see what the turnout is the higher the turnout there for the president the better. then down south, norfolk and some of these other places that karl is talking about down south still red state virginia, same thing. what's the turn out there and what kind of vote margins compare to 2008. here is the thing, virginia was for 40-something years and almost 50 years since l.b.j. won it in 1964. it's been a red state. i agree with karl. it's turned purple. that happened zeus in the last, you know, four years. and the question is did it turn even little bit more blue for the president to turn out that vote. >> i have one moderate disagreement. things don't change that quickly. it has been changing for 20 years and democrats simply didn't acknowledge it it's like west virginia. does anybody think that between 1996 when bill clinton won it by 22 points and 2000,

when george w. bush won it by 6 points that it changed that much in those four years? no. it's we went in contested in 2000 and won. that's what we got here. >> chris: so, that's a lot of explanation for the fact that we don't know, folks. we don't know what's going to happen in virginia. we don't know for hours what's going to happen in west virginia. now we added the polls closing in north carolina and ohio and we don't know there. guess what, welcome to an old fashioned election night with a space cowboys. right back to you. [ laughter ] >> bret: okay, chris. thank you. fox news has an election alert now. we can now project that mitt romney will beat president obama in south carolina picking up the palmetto state's 9 electoral votes. not a surprise there and, again, as you look at that screen, you can see the vote, the total there in this screen, president obama with 4109 votes. mitt romney with fewer but he gets the checkmark because this is based on both the exit

poll data and the raw totals coming in as michael barone talked about earlier. they are now convinced back there at the decision desk inside the fish bowl that they have enough data that they can make sure that it's accurate. >> yeah, that's right, bret. south carolina was a state where actually barack obama did a little better than many people expected in 2008. i think there was spontaneous turnout of a lot of african-americans there which are about 29% of the state's population. they wanted to come out and vote people who hadn't voted before. but it wasn't really close at that point. and the fact that it's called suggest that the final total will end up a little more for mitt romney than it was for john mccain and perhaps a lot more. >> megyn: michael, can you explain now virginia too close to call, ohio too close to call, the polls are closed, what is happening now that will determine when we are able to call them? like, are people counts the votes still in those states? >> people are counting the votes in those states.

as you know, sometimes that can take an awful long time like florida in 2000, it took 36 days of talk and arguments. >> megyn: a lot of it is electronic now. can you press a button and tell us the totals. >> press a button and the totals. state of can't count the votes for five weeks that was the case with the 2008 presidential election. it's not a target state. it's not very -- hasn't been very close so it hasn't mattered but actually you can't tell the total number of votes in the nation until california gets around to doing it. you know, some states count them very clean and don't seem to have any problem. >> megyn: how about virginia? is that true of virginia. >> virginia, that has been true. when george allen was defeated for senator six years ago by 6,000 or 7,000 votes, virginia went right down, you know, they went back over that, i believe there was recount or reexpectation of the vote, less than 100 votes changed. it was pretty straightforward. new hampshire is famous for doing that well, too and so

forth. other states have had bigger problems. >> bret: we should point out if we put that back up. that was the national popular vote total. that will pop up throughout the night as well. you will see the actual vote total through the night. these are all the states throughout the nation and there you see it as it continues to tick up and for us, after the iowa caucuses, the difference was added, 61256 right now so i don't have to pull out the calculator. >> megyn: didn't you get yelled at by math teacher for that. >> bret: i did. bill hemmer is at the billboard looking at what is happening in ohio right now. >> i'm trying to figure this out. good evening again. we are looking at the national polling numbers for the real vote and raw vote here. this is very early on as we go throughout the night, we're going to show that to you. but we're trying to figure out and drill down what is happening in ohio. i want to pull down a few keys that we did not mention a few years ago and that is here in the 88 counties of ohio. again, this will start to fill in a little bit. you see the county right here starting to go a little bit

red pickaway county. this is very early on in the vote. you will see these counties bounce back and forth red and blue throughout the entire night. 2008 basis for comparison again here. there is a county up here called stark county. this is canton, ohio, racked by manufacturing losses over the past 20 years, usersed to be a big hoover plant there. they are trying to get back on their feet. this is what is considered a bellwether county in ohio because it really reflects the overall vote of the nation, 53% 47% in 2008. pretty darn close wouldn't you say? 2004 a county barely won by john kerry about 2 points. 51%, 49%. no results in just yet from stark county. we will watch that and see which way the wind blows this year. also, lake county, this is just east of cleveland. the suburbs east of cleveland. look how close this was four years ago. almost a 50/50 split. the amazing thing about that county is it was almost a

50/50 split four years prior to that as well. lake county should give us indication little bit what is happening and moving on the inside numbers here. i find this interesting too. down here is athens county. that is where you find ohio university, it's a largely rural school. we were getting indications earlier today that the voting lines -- all antidotal by the way, the voting lines in athens, ohio, that you think would be high with the student population there voting did not seem to be that impressive. what does that mean? not quite sure just yet. but we're going to monitor that throughout the night. what it means at the moment here is that ohio, based on what we are seeing from 2012 is too close to call for various reasons. and you're gonna see, again, this trickle in right here throughout the night. as you see just a couple votes here. you know 1800 for the president. 3900 for mitt romney. but give it a little bit of time here because the 18 electoral votes in ohio as you well know it is very difficult to see a path for either man

to the white house unless you win there in the buckeye state. >> bret: you are right, bill, thank you. >> megyn: they are worth the wait. the sunshine swing state florida has the most electoral votes of any of the swing states. a live report from there as the polls are about to close. plus, mike huckabee with his thoughts on this election live from america's election headquarters as we take a look at some the other races called so far tonight. stay with us. you see us, at the start of the day. on the company phone list that's a few names longer. you see us bank on busier highways. on once empty fields. everyday you see all the ways all of us at us bank

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>> bret: welcome back to america's election headquarters. clock down building on the next poll closings as they scroll up there. florida 11 minutes, 30 seconds away.

minutes until the -- >> megyn: florida, and that's pretty cool by the way the times square rental that we have taken out o. thanks american eagle. i want to get live to steve harrigan down in tampa, florida update from there. hey, steve. >> megyn, the polls have closed in most of florida at 7:00. but there is still those 10 counties in the panhandle where they closed at 8:00. we are getting some preliminary data in from florida. this is early voting and absentee balloting from some of the counties. that information now being released. of course the real area to keep an eye on in florida is the heart of the state, the center along the i-4 corridor. southern traditionally democratic northern republic. the real battle in florida has been fought along that i-4 corridor in cities like orlando and tampa. we are getting some information on the early balloting president obama ahead in orange county. that includes orlando. and also ahead here in hillsborough county, that includes tampa. bitterly fought contest in this county gone with the winner in every presidential

election except one since 1960. a real closely watched county here and obama leading in both of those i-4 counties right now based on early voting alone, early in absentee ballots. back to you. >> megyn: steve harrigan, back to you. >> bret: fox news is partnering with twitter watching the online traffic through social media jenna lee is following that for us tonight. hi, general. >> that hi there, bret. as you do the play-by-play here social media is going to give us the color commentary if you will. more than half of us use social media to talk about politics and talking a lot about the election tonight. what twitter does is give us in small doses the national conversation in realtime. take a look what's happening right now on twitter. right now more than 41,000 election-related tweets per minute. for context, that's about what we saw when team u.s.a. won gold in basketball at the olympics. so, we're really keeping up the pace here. as far as twitter-related tweets overall, 11 million tweets all day related to the

election and here are what people are talking about. the economy, foreign policy as well. you can see taxes and education. this really has stayed steady for most of the day. let's compare it to this. what we are seeing in virginia we can't call this race yet. here is what twitter says people are talking about in that state. very interesting to see how this compares to the national conversation. taxes being the top as is the economy. then you have healthcare in the top five topics sneaking its way on to this list. interesting, because we haven't seen healthcare yet. and, again, this is not positive or negative. this is just mentioned, so this is part of the conversation happening in virginia. we're going to continue to do this state-by state analysis as we go throughout the election night. as always foxnews.com slash politics for continuing coverage. bret? >> bret: okay, jenna, thanks. you can follow us on twitter. twitter.com megyn kelly and at bret baier. we do have election alert right now. >> megyn: we want to get that to you. fox news can project that mitt romney will win the state of

georgia which carries 16 electoral votes. it was never contested by the democrats. it's not a surprise. it is points on the board, however and changes our total electoral map. we are continuing to count the numbers as we await the next poll closings, we want to take a minute to check in with martha maccallum who has a look at the national election polls and what's mattering to the voters today, martha? >> we are trying to read the tea leaves here, megyn. let's get another look at some the national exit poll numbers. we will get a little bit of a mood in the country about these two candidates. we have seen tonight that voters believe that president obama, quote: cares about people like them. we told you about that one earlier. here is another one that was a theme hit very hard by the obama campaign on the trail out there. that his policies favor the middle class. he talks about growing the economy from the middle out. so you see that that has clearly registered because 43% believe that his policies do indeed favor the middle class. now, how about handling an international crisis? this is sort of the only place

in these numbers where we night have some indication of how people felt about what happened in benghazi on september 11th. we really don't have any clearer focus than this but this is a general international number, 56% say they do trust the president to handle international crisis. let's take a look at how people felt about mitt romney with that -- in that regard. 51% say that they trust mitt romney in handling an international crisis. and what about the whole vision question? i would say over the past three weeks to it four weeks, over the past month, a big vision for the country has been a really strong focus of the romney campaign. and it seems to have been reaching voters out there because they say they look for someone who, quote: shares my values and you can take a look at this in terms of the vision for the future. 29% say he shares my vision for the future. president obama has a wide lead among those who want an empathetic candidate. so this is starting to give us an indication of how they feel strong leader 19% about the

president in that regard. so, going through it all, as we wait for these calls in virginia and north carolina, get you another look at the exit polls a little later on. back to you guys. >> megyn: thank you. >> bret: we just called georgia it hasn't gone for a democrat since bill clintons in 1992. clinton in 1992 lost north carolina to george bush. we're still waiting on north carolina. we had called georgia for mitt romney. just 8 minutes on the east coast to go when the voting is over in 16 states and the district of columbia. we have got florida, new hampshire, and pennsylvania about it to close and those are big states in this race. keep it here. a winter wonderland doesn't just happen.

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>> bret: we are just minutes away from the next poll closings, polls close in 16 more states and the district of columbia. they will close at 8:00 p.m. good evening from america's election headquarters. i'm bret baier. >> megyn: i'm megyn kelly. polls are just about to close in the battleground states of florida, new hampshire, and pennsylvania. along with governor romney's home state of massachusetts and president obama's home state of illinois. bret showed you what was going on outside. let me show you what is going on inside the studio. with us tonight our distinguished panel here to analyze the results as we get them. bill hemmer is at the billboard drilling down on the race results in realtime. chris wallace, karl rove and joe trippi crunching the numbers from the counties. make a real difference in the

race: >> bret: let's go to our panel as we wait for the top of the hour. brit, your thoughts we're getting these exit polls coming in and obviously making some calls, not the states that are really crucial here because they appear too tight. >> brit: indeed, and the exit polls are beginning to -- the sample has begin to fill out. we are getting second wave here now. and basically in america there are only two kinds of voters. probably true in other country as well. male voters and female voters. at the moment it appears that female voters are breaking for obama 53%, 45%. male voters are breaking 53% to 44%. however 54% of the electorate is female. 46% is male. at least based on that early cutting of it that would appear to it be advantage obama. long way to go. >> bret: juan.

>> after that first debate, you saw spans of female voters break towards mitt romney the question was whether or not that could contract as you got closer to election day. what we are seeing now according to these latest exit polls is in fact those numbers have shrunk and come back to their historical standard, if that is true that is going to be key in states like ohio, key in north carolina, florida that we just heard about. and, again, could be quite telling. because at the moment, what you see is that governor romney has a plus 10 advantage early on among men coming into this election. and if he he -- in order for president obama to counter react that, he he has to get back to an advantage among women. that's what it looks like at this moment. >> megyn: kirsten, your thoughts on that, on the democrats made a big deal of the war on women and so on. do you see any reflection of that here? >> i think even when i talked to pollsters before the election whether or not this move that we thought we were seeing, regardless of who i talked to they said, no, we are going to end up seeing the

same kind of general gear gap that we see in every election which is obama won women by about 13 points last time around and they expect it to be somewhere in that same range. i think what they were doing was trying to begin -- ginn up their support. >> bret: okay, panel, stand by for the top of the hour as we get ready for poll closings 8:00 p.m. it's 8:00 p.m. on the east coast and polls have now closed in 16 more states wells the district of columbia, that's a total of 172 electoral votes up for grabs. the biggest batch of the evening. and the most important prizes are in that batch. they include -- sorry, after you. >> megyn: they include florida, pennsylvania and new hampshire all which president obama carried comfortably in 2008 but all of which have been much closer in the preelection polls in time around. it is too soon to say who will prevail in those three battle grounds but their strategic importance can't be overstated when it comes to the path 270

needed to clinch the presidency. >> bret: that's the number. mitt romney's path hinges on winning florida's 29 electoral votes. mitt romney has been leading in the preelection polls but that lead has been within the margin of error. the two candidates are now neck and neck in the sunshine state. >> megyn: the president's path to 270 is contingent on winning pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes. a state that has not gone for a republic presidential candidate since 1988. pennsylvania seemed to come into play late in this year's contest, having earlier been considered safe democratic territory. president obama has a lead over governor romney in pennsylvania but it is too soon to call that race tonight. >> bret: we have tiny new hampshire which is not necessarily a make or break state for either candidate although both have competed fiercely there because if the national race comes down to the wire new hampshire's four electoral votes could be enough to put either candidate over the top. although the granted state voted for obama in 2008,

romney may benefit this time around because he has a home there and he launched his presidential campaign there. but, it's too soon to call new hampshire as well. >> megyn: meantime there are states where we can project winners at this hour. fox news can project that obama will win 72 electoral votes in the following states, illinois. the president's home state a democratic bastian and prize in the midwest. delaware, the home of vice president joe biden and democratic strong hold. >> bret: connecticut which has voted democratic in the bass five presidential elections. maryland home to federal government workers and massachusetts. mitt romney's home state democratic strong hold for generations. >> megyn: new jersey, a state still reeling from the after-effects of hurricane sandy where some voters had to cast ballots in national guard trucks also going for the president and rhode island, the smallest state in the nation will vote democratic for the seventh consecutive election. >> bret: the district of columbia which will keep its

perfect record of voting democratic will go to president obama. the president will also win three of maine's four electoral votes according to our analysis of fox exit polls. we will not know the fate of maine's fourth electoral vote until we begin to see the actual tallies from that state's second congressional district. it's one of two states that breaks up the electoral votes. >> megyn: weird thing about maine it could become crucial later on. fox news can predict that mitt romney will win alabama. the yellow hammer state will stay red this time the ninth election in a row as well as mississippi where romney struggled with primary voters but it will be solidly in his corner tonight. oklahoma, which was the worst state for obama in 2008 with just 34% of the vote look no, sir friendier this time. romney also has a lead in missouri which has been a bellwether in every election but two in the last century but it is too soon to call. >> bret: interesting senate race there. romney also leads in tennessee at this hour.

>> megyn: joining us now, host of the o'reilly factor, bill o'reilly, who we managed to bring in. we said look, it's 8:00. it's time for you. >> bill: that's right. i wandered in and i have been doing this for 16 years. where else am i going to go. >> bret: thanks for letting us be here. >> megyn: we can't call any of the critical states at this hour. >> bill: i don't really have any thoughts on that. [ laughter ] >> bill: but i did pick up two things. on the exit polling, hurricane sandy was prominent in the exit polling. and that is really interesting. because it just impacted a bunch of northeast states who would vote for barack obama anyway. but the country was so locked in on this fierce storm. americans like storms. and they were -- and there was chris christie and president obama walking down the beach, you know, with a little seth in the moon glow music behind him and it just wiped the governor's campaign off the map. for five days. five days mitt romney

disappeared from the national debate and from the media headline. now, it's interesting, because i told their campaign, and this is not self-aggrandizement, i was speaking to some of the romney people i said do you have any idea that you are now invisible? no one is paying attention to you. but, by extension, president obama is there trying to help the sandy victims. i don't think that registered on the romney people. but, in the exit polls tonight, that is a factor that president obama looked bipartisan and presidential during that storm. second thing, the romney campaign, and since john adams ran against thomas jefferson, this has been the case, had a strategy. and the strategy was we did better than we thought we were going to do in the debates. we're going to roll that into election day and take no chances. and that's exactly what the romney campaign did. they took no chances. they didn't go on talk radio. they didn't go on national

programs outside of football game interviews which mean nothing. they thought that they did well enough in the debates to roll in. and, you know what? they were right except for hurricane sandy. >> bret: so you heard, bill, governor christie push back numerous times about criticism of his praising president obama. >> bill: it doesn't matter. it's not what is said. it is what is seen. it's the picture in america that dominates. not the believe jaght. the picture was here is a picture of the president in his president jacket. here is christie and they are arm in arm. that means that the president is doing something good. >> megyn: do you find that hard to believe that people would change their opinion of this president who has been all over the news for a year. >> bill: here is what i find hard to believe, that image of hurricane sandy overrode the libyan story.

president obama got more positive currency out of sandy than negative currency out of libya. that's what i find amazing. >> megyn: on libya, and it's not specifically polling on libya, it's polling on who is able to handle international crisis, the president is doing very well. >> bill: doing well. >> megyn: romney is doing well but the president as well. your reaction how that relates to libya. >> bill: amazing that americans did not lock in on the libyan situation and obviously the president trying to dodge that and not explain it it's obviously troubling. the hurricane sandy thing overrode that and, again, that's because there were pictures and the pictures really help the president. if he wins tonight, hurricane sandy is won of -- one of the reasons. >> bret: what's your 70s evening? you look at the exit polls, you look at -- >> bill: my sense of the evening is if mitt romney loses in ohio the president is reelected.

>> megyn: how do you think we got to that point? president obama's approval rating was so low and obviously this is hypothetical. we don't know even who is winning right now never mind who won. how do you think it got this tight? >> bill: because it's a changing country much the item graphics are changing. it's not a traditional america anymore. there are 50% of the voting public who want stuff. they want things who is going to give them things? president obama. he knows it and he ran on it. and where do i 20 years ago president obama would have been roundly defeated by establishment candidate like mitt romney. the white establishment is now the minority. and the voters, many of them, feel that economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. you are going to see hispanic vote for president obama.

overwhelming for president obama. and women will probably break president obama's way. people feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things? >> bret: bill, will you stick around for a couple minutes? >> bill: absolutely not. i have got to go. >> bret: it's your hour. >> bill: oh it's my hour. >> bret: thanks for having us. let's bring in the panel. steve, have you been looking at second wave of exit polls and bill mentioning hurricane sandy. your thoughts where we are? >> i think that's a good point. there was so much speculation for the last week and a half about what the effect of hurricane sandy could possibly be. and i think there was a split. there seems to be, when you talk to campaign officials, this freezing of the race, holding it in place. the the question was pick up in the aftermath of sandy and would there be much coverage of the continuing difficulties of people in places like new jersey, new york, elsewhere would president obama pay a

price for going back to the campaign trail? as these people were continuing to suffer. and it seems from these exit polls that sandy, the people who were paying attention to sandy likes to see the president being president. they like to see the bipartisan hug from chris christie. and that it affected -- that it may have affected their vote. the key question about sandy is one that brit raised earlier people predisposed for voting for barack obama anyway and likes to see him that way or were they these prized voters, suburban housewives in columbus, ohio, who had been targeted by the romney campaign, so furiously so long saw the president, liked what they saw and ultimately were late decider for barack obama. >> bret: let's remember what mitt romney was doing that seemed to be serving him so well at the time. he was talking about bipartisanship and how he could achieve it and that he would reach out to the other party and, all the information we had gave us to believe that people liked hearing that. so, what is the president get to do?

he gets to go out and stand shoulder to shoulder with this decidedly republic figure, a leading figure at mitt romney's convention and have that governor praise him for his efforts on behalf of the state of new jersey. people like that sort of thing. they like to see that. while mitt romney as was talking about bipartisanship the president gave as bill said earlier the image of him practicing it. politically that's pretty strong medicine. >> juan: i think that plays into something we are seeing in the exit polls which, again, this president cares about people like me. now, part of that equation has to do with who are people like me? and, again, if you look at -- usually you look at that in terms of income groups, middle income people we were talking about earlier, megyn, people in favor of the auto bailout strongly in favor of president obama. but, you also see it, i think, here in terms of racial breakdowns, something bill o'reilly was talking about. we are seeing a model that basically says this is the 2008 turnout model with high

percentages of blacks and hispanics turning out. we're seeing about the same percentage of young people, again, a big obama constituency turn out. and in all these models that we're what we're seeing on these exit polls is, for example, narrowly it's high 60% of latinos voting for obama. 90% blacks voting for obama. among whites, this is very telling, obama -- romney is getting close to 60% of the white vote in the country. >> megyn: we don't know though necessarily whether the young voters in particular are breaking for the president the way they did four years ago. i mean, all that is still being tallied. but the advantage so far doesn't seem as considerable as it was before. kirsten, going into tonight there was a big debate about the polls and what was true about the polls, right? because a lot of them were showing dems plus seven. dems plus 7. the question was is that what the electorate looks like dems plus 7 as it did in 2008?

we are not seeing that margin tonight. >> well, i would say two things. i think that the reason that we -- that what was happening was when you poll, they don't ask what party you belong to. they ask you for what party you identify with. and so if you are an independent, and you think you are going to vote republic, you say republic. so, in 2010 you started seeing more republics in the polls. and so when you see that you start to know people are moving towards one party or another. we knew that in 2010 we were going to see the republics take over congress. i think that's what's been happening. it's not that people are skewing them and polling too many democrats. one thing i would say is if you look at the number, if these numbers are right, whites are about 73%. that's the big number that everybody was looking at. >> explain that. >> obama campaign has a model based on the idea it was going to be around 72% and romney campaign has a model based on probably more. i mean steve probably knows better but more like 47% or

75%. those -- that sounds like nothing, right? those couple percentage points are the difference between mitt romney winning and not winning. >> megyn: 73 is right in the middle. if obama team 72, and romney 74 or 75. what does 73 mean? >> i would argue probably closer to the obama campaign. i think romney thinking closer to 75. >> megyn: do well with whites. >> they need more white people voting, basically. the obama campaign's model is based on a shifting demographic. based on more hispanics and number of african-americans showing up. people kept saying it's never going to be like 2008. i never really bought into that i don't know why we think that african-americans aren't going to turn out again to vote for barack obama. >> megyn: high unemployment and so on. >> there is a choice. >> bret: on the question when did you finally decide for whom to vote in the presidential election. 51%, 44% just today president obama.

>> yeah. >> bret: last few days 47% 47%. >> bill: i feel like an oracle. that's what i was saying on the factor last week sprint not coast in like the governor's campaign did. have you got to be bold and fresh. you have got to go. people are watching. here is an really interesting stat i saw because kelly forced me to read these exit polls. they are so boring. [ laughter ] in new hampshire, independent voters in new hampshire are breaking toward the president 8%. now, new hampshire are the folks. that's the folks. all right? and if he -- president obama can do that well in new hampshire among independents, very good news for him. >> megyn: what do you make of this racial divide that juan was just talking about, bill, how you have got, you know, this high number of whites voting for mitt romney and people of color voting for president obama? >> bill: first of all when i said juan president obama sympathizes. people don't sympathize with

williams. everything goes off the chart. it's a changing country. we are changing item graphically, we are changing our attitudes. we are becoming more like western europe that the government is there to serve us rather than what john kennedy said, ask what you can do for your country. no we are not asking that anymore. what county country do for us? that's huge. and i'm not going to generalize about any ethnic group, it's a mentality that pervades across society that we're no longer the traditional americans, that we're all in it together and going to build this country we're going to do it, the folks. no, it's some people are saying i don't want to do it but i want them to do it for me. that's huge and president obama's campaign targeted those people. and his administration did. and that's why we are spending so much money. that's why the president's philosophy of bigger government appeals. >> megyn: we want to underscore that we are still -- this race is still too close to call for several of the key states. we have not made a call in

ohio. we have not made a call in north carolina. we have not made a call in virginia. so we are awaiting, you know, these number crunchers who do their job. they think these races are just too tight. so, while the president leads with some groups and mitt romney leads with others, we can't tell you hot winner is going to be in most of these swing states, in really any of the swing states that have closed so far but we do have this. fox news can now project that mitt romney will win tennessee and its 11 electoral votes. not a particular surprise there but those votes going over into his column now, bret. >> bret: that is not a surprise. it was going to be a republic state pretty much all along. wasn't contested. we do have some news about virginia though. and this is interesting. because the commonwealth has decided that if you were in line by 7:00 p.m., because of the long lines there, that the virginia state board of

elections has agreed to pause the reporting for about an hour. and that's why we, perhaps, haven't seen more votes coming in quicker from the commonwealth of virginia. mike emanuel reported earlier that anybody in line by 7:00, which is usually the case, could vote. they just announced that consulting with romney and barack obama campaigns, both campaigns signed on and so that's why some of this reporting has been delayed in virginia. so we may start seeing vote totals come in. >> megyn: talking with michael barone about how well they count the vote traditionally in virginia and he said pretty well. but they are having all sorts of turnout issues and they want to get everybody's vote counted if you can imagine show up at the poll at 6:59 don't want to be told you can't vote and they have not been told that. >> bret: that's right. they will be counted. we are just getting started tonight. arkansas is set to close at 8:30. we will talk to former arkansas governor mike huckabee. plus, vice presidential nominee, former vice presidential nominee sarah palin live from america's

election headquarters. >> megyn: mr. bill, thanks for being here. >> bill: sure, guys, i appreciate it. >> megyn: you are free to go. >> bill: thank you very much. >> megyn: watch the boards. we'll be right back.

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>> bret: welcome back to america's election headquarters. you are looking live in times square as we get ready to head to the top of the hour. we are watching some races and they are too close to call. in virginia and ohio, those are the big ones at this hour, and, boy, it's tight. >> megyn: it's also tight in north carolina and florida. fox news saying those are too close to call as well but they are crunching the numbers fiercely. those are four states in which the polls have closed but we are not ready to project a winner. i want to go to chris wallace who is back with our panel. karl rove and joe trippi except i can see oh yeah, there we go. he was in the dark but now there is light. >> you mean that literally or figuratively. >> chris: don't answer that question. it was a trick. the noise you may have heard in the back of the studio was numbers crunching and in fact karl rove just said to me i

love it when we get numbers. let's deal first of all with this question because we are not getting numbers out of virginia anymore because they are stopped giving results while they wait for people online to vote. but you have some numbers. >> they have extended the voting. they are going to keep the lines rolling in fairfax and norfolk, democrat areas, virginia beach, a republic area. and interestingly enough, three swing counties. like co-in the center part of the state. lou lou lowden. hemice 58%. lowden he got 554%. prince william 58 after republicans got 53% about. i think these are counties now swinging back. i say that because we do have results in two counties. in culpeper in northern virginia, romney is getting

61%. 6 points better than mccain got in 2004. and. >> chris: 2008. >> 2000 -- 2008. rockingham county 74%. seven points better. mccain 67% four years ago. >> chris: now, you have some information, joe, about florida. >> well, florida, when i mentioned it to you, florida had flipped to romney taking the lead 51% 49% over obama: in the short time since karl started talking it flipped back again to obama taking the lead 50%, 49% the other way. it's been going -- obama led in the early stages and it's been going back and for the in a very very small one point window there. >> chris: but the fact that the early vote, which was favoring the democrats, that we have gotten all of that counted now. and now we are into the vote today. >> democrats won the early vote four years ago by a huge number in florida and then

lost election day. they won -- we got about 35%, 36% of the vote. in the early voted is largely in, and now we're starting to get the election day vote and the democrat advantage in early vote has been erased, largely erased and we will see this back and forth as the final dribs and drabs of the early vote. i would suspect this is mostly early vote and some of the smaller counties starting to report. >> chris: is that good news for. >> i think it's good news for romney. i remember in 2004 we were behind until we got to about 30%, 35% of the vote and pulled out and won a solid victory. >> chris: joe. >> one thing that karl points out to with these swings going to romney, the obama people factored that in. they realized that there was going to be movement in these states away from them with these swing voters. buff what they try to do and we'll see they do it is to increase their base turnout to make up for that difference. and we don't know yet in other parts of fairfax county and other parts of the north in

charlesville and virginia. they have been able to do that. that's the whole game here. they have -- the swing has moved obviously to romney. >> chris: we are going to run out of time here. you have some information about ohio, too. >> this plays on this. this is cuyahoga county, 20. >> chris: that's cleveland, northeastern ohio, this is a big democratic strong hold. >> which obama won with 70% of the vote. biggest source of the votes in the state for him. 20 democratic precincts. 49.8% turnout at 5:00 p.m. 7 nearby adjacent republic precincts at 5 p.m. had 73.8% turnout. exactly the point that joe made. what they are counting on is these democrat precincts having a very high turnout at least in this part of ohio the republicans are doing a better job of getting out their vote. and i think that's what we are going to see when we look at virginia. we will see not only is romney doing much better percentage wise than mccain but he is also getting a bigger chunk of votes. >> chris: what you basically

have said not that you are calling the race but you are saying good news for romney in virginia, florida and ohio? >> two thirds, look, in the south, in fact, look, in ohio and virginia, in ohio, the last time the republics lost the election day was 1964. they have never won the early vote. in florida, i can't remember the last time the republics won the early vote. i don't think they have lost again. the election day vote since 1964. >> chris: all right. as they say nobody has ever made more out of more fragmentary returns than these guys. the numbers crunching goes on. we will try to keep it down bret and megyn and not have to too loud here in the back of the studio. >> megyn: the louder the better. we want to hear you. thanks chris, thanks, guys. >> bret: thanks, chris. we put this up before in florida fox news can project that democratic senator bill nelson will defeat republic challenger connie mack. and in north carolina this is a new call. we can now project that republic pat mccory, he has

now won. we can project that he will win this race over the democrat there walter dalton. pat mccrory is the former mayor of charlotte. he will win this race. republicans will take the north carolina gubernatorial seat. >> megyn: a lot of folks are emailing saying how are you calling this state or this state or that race or this race when you have less than a majority of the re60's reporting the vote. in these are -- this the is way decision-making is done. it's the percentage of the expected vote that we show on the screen that's in. and then we count who has the percent -- percentage lead versus the other candidate: way the decision desk will look at it is look at the counties outstanding and they can see, okay, if romney has a lead over obama in all the other counties that are going to close, are heavily heavily republic, then they can project that romney is going to be the winner even without more than a majority of the vote total in.

so, hopefully that helps make it a little bit more close -- clear. we are waiting for the next polls to close in 13 seconds. we are hoping to make a race call momentarily in arkansas as the big states, florida, new hampshire, pennsylvania, north carolina, virginia are still too close to call. >> megyn: it is 8:30 here in the east and polls are closed in arkansas where fox news can project that governor mitt romney will win former president bill clinton's home state picking up another six electoral votes in the contest there. you can see that state, again, going reds. >> bret: it's important to point out also that throughout the night you look at the bottom of the screen, the ticker, you will see the raw vote total. you will see the different races circled through and the checkmark obviously is a winning mark next to those races. >> megyn: and the number of -- looking on the monitor. and the number of electoral votes right here between the

president and mitt romney. you know all the states that we have been calling so far are states that we knew. i mean, we kind of knew which way they were going to go. haven't had a big surprise. >> bret: you know, it's tough to be the vanna white. >> megyn: you are like the vernon white. [ laughter ] there are long lines at the polls in virginia. enough to they have extended the opportunity for folks to actually cast their ballots there, folks who got in line before 7:00 are given the opportunity to actually vote. bill hemmer is live at the billboard with a look at why virginia is so important in this race. bill? >> bill: you are wearing white, megyn, maybe can you flip that. >> megyn: i will bring it, bill. >> bill: here is what we are looking at in virginia goes to what karl was trying to explain a short time ago. if you were following this race in the last two weeks you know that mitt romney and barack obama carpet bombed trying to drive up the voters there in many ways the state of virginia can be broken down like we mentioned cuyahoga county in northern ohio and

cleveland this is fairfax county right across from washington, d.c. right along the potomac river. just a handful of votes coming in right now. can you drive up your numbers based on results in fairfax county. mitt romney paul ryan. numbers just trickling in here as well, but if mitt romney wants to do well in these 13 electoral votes up for grabs in virginia, you know, those are the areas that we're going to be watching. what i find fascinating, developing now in florida is right down here where there is 29 electoral votes on the line. this is the i-4 corridor, interstate 4 starts over here in tampa and orlando into daytona. this is where your independent swing voters live. this is where you win the state. democrats pretty much dominate the southeast. republicans do very well across the northern section. but right in here it is red and blue and it's a mix of both. and just watching this -- this is hillsborough county in tampa, florida. this has gone from red one

moment, blue the next. red the next moment. and blue the next. depending on how the precincts are checking in right now. about half the votes tallied up here in hillsborough county. and at the moment you see barack obama with a lead there in hillsborough county. but you move over here, perhaps the polk county where you see mitt romney doing well right now. up to orange county, barack obama did well here four years ago, at the moment anyway, based on a lot of these early votes and some of the votes are starting to tabulate now, barack obama seems to be doing very well in orange county, also. but, this is the heart of the state to keep an eye on. you can go back to 2008 and you can find winners here in this part of florida as well. back in 2004, this is where george bush won. at the time 27 electoral votes in florida over john kerry and won the state. but, so far in 2012, a bit of a mix of red and blue here in florida. going to keep an eye on ohio next time we come back. try to drill down a little bit and see what we see here with

the map starting to fill. in the cleveland, columbus are down here and cincinnati. >> megyn: all right, bill, thank you. >> thank you, bill. we are waiting on some more results out of virginia as we get the raw totals in. they are continuing to come in. although there was that pause because of the long lines. former arkansas governor and former presidential candidate mike huckabee joins us now. governor, thanks for being here. >> pleasure, bret. thank you. >> bret: your thoughts on the night as it's developing. there is not a lot we can tell you about the battleground state so far. >> mike: well, not a lot. i think, you know, you just called arkansas. the real story there is going to be for the first time since reconstruction that state is going to go republic in both the house and the senate. and what's remarkable, when i became governor 16 years ago it was 89% democrat. it has been a huge turn. i think they need to have a big party and honor the person who has helped make that possible, that's barack obama. his left-wing policies has

really made a shift in states like that and it's one of the stories that will happen down ballot that may not be reflected so much at the top of the ticket, which was expected. but huge repercussions in the rest of the ballot, not just in that state but in other states across the country. >> bret: you were a presidential candidate. you had a night like this waiting for a lot of states to come n primaries. are you surprised about the strength of president obama in some place like virginia, in north carolina? your thoughts on the early states that we haven't been able to call? >> not really. he is the president. it's tough to knock off an incumbent. i don't care at what level. you really have the burden, if you are the challenger. and barack obama is still personally liked, but i think as people evaluate his policies there is still a lot of people. i'm still confident that virginia and north carolina are going to swing to mitt romney before the evening is over. i think what we saw august the

1st, with all those people going out and getting a chicken sandwich. chick-fil-a day was dress rehearsal for today. i think you are going to see an enormous level of voters from rural parts of the country who have lined up and who will go vote and i still think mitt romney wins when it is all over. >> megyn: governor, what do you make of the racial divide we are seeing so far in the vote totals showing whites overwhelmingly voting for mitt romney but people of color, blacks, latinos and other voting more for president obama? >> i don't see it as all that shocking. i mean, typically people of color vote democratic anyway. so that's not all that unusual. it's rare for republics to get a significant portion of minority vote. it shouldn't be. i think republicans have done a pathetic job of reaching out to people of color. something we have got to work on. and it's a group of people that, frankly, should be with us based on the real policy of conservatism. but, republics have acted as if they can't get the vote so they don't try.

and the result is they don't get the vote. so that's not, to me, as muchs of a shock. i absolutely reject the motion that white people are voting for mitt romney and black people are voting for barack obama. i think conservatives are voting for mitt romney and liberals are voting for barack obama. and this country is still a divided country ideologically more than it is racially. >> bret: governor, really quickly, you look at the exit polls. mitt romney is winning in people who are -- who attend religious services more than once a week or once a week. weekly. he is winning in protestants, and obviously mormons, in catholics. what do you think about the evangelical vote in this race? and has it materialized? >> well, it has. one thing that i wish that mitt had done is reach out even more to those voters. i think he assumed they would be with him. the truth is they are not so much with him, although they are, they are really just scared to death of four more

years of barack obama. they have seen their religious liberties trampled all over. this is an administration that thinks it has a right to limit how far we can believe. and when our belief conflicts with the government the government is supposed to win. i think people are ridiculously afraid of that. and i think they totally believe that we have got to make a change so that's why i believe that that faith vote is definite natalie going to be in romney's camp tonight. >> bret: governor mike huckabee thanks very much. >> megyn: just want to make a correction of something bill o'reilly said something i love to do as he would be the first to tell you. he had said that president obama is up by 8 points with independents in new hampshire. that's not the case. is he up by just two points in new hampshire among independents. and he is down, i think it's 10 points. is he down 10 points from what he got among independents in new hampshire back in 2008. now, that could all change: again, the exit date that is just coming in. you can got the to keep an asterisk after all these numbers. it's not just the first wave

of exit polling that can be wrong and can end up being completely off. the second wave too. only the raw vote as it comes in that gets tabulated will tell us what we all really want to know. so in any event. obama is up by 2 points. >> bret: we have election note now. fox news can project that chris murphy will defeat linda mcmahon the former ceo of worldwide wrestling to fill the senate seat being vacated by joe lieberman an independent who caucused with democrats. murphy is a three-term congressman represents northern connecticut. this was the second bid, the senate bid for mcmahon who ran against richard blumenthal who is now senator back in 2010. she made the economy really the centerpiece of this campaign. and was touting that private sector experience. but it is not enough in connecticut which traditionally goes blue, but many people thought linda mcmahon had a shot. >> megyn: yeah. coming up, we will speak with carl cameron with the romney camp and ed henry with the

obama camp and polls in 14 states will close in less than half an hour as we watch results still coming in from four swing states. ohio, florida, virginia, and north carolina. our coverage live on america's election headquarters continues. don't go away. music is a universal language. but when i was in an accident... i was worried the health care system spoke a language all its own with unitedhealthcare, i got help that fit my life.

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taefficient and low cost building blocks to help you keep more of what you earn. call your advisor. visit ishares.com. ishares. yeah, ishares. ishares by blackrock. call 1-800-ishares for a prospectus which includes investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. read and consider it carefully before investing. 2 ♪ >> bret: welcome back to america's election headquarters. we are watching a very close race develop in virginia, still too close to call. there you see the raw vote total and the percentages with 30% of the expected vote in. we can tell you that this is just a tight one in virginia as they have extended the voting because of the long lines. and then in ohio, there you see the president with a big lead early. again, 22% of the expected vote in. remember, that the early vote in ohio has to do with

absentees and early vote. you will start getting raw totals from all over the state shortly. now, we expect that to be a tight race as well. >> megyn: the polls have also closed in but we are not ready to project a winner in the states of north carolina where you can see, again, a raiser thin race, 55% of the vote is in with mitt romney showing a slight lead at this hour but we are still counting. they are still counting down in florida. 29 electoral votes and such a critical state in this election. you can see still too close to call this number here with 59% of the vote in, barack obama with a slight lead over the republic mitt romney. we want to check in with the campaign headquarters including our chief white house correspondent ed henry who is live at obama campaign headquarters in chicago and our chief political correspondent carl cameron live at romney headquarters in boston. we start with carl. >> hi there, megyn. the crowd is excited and

enthused. glad it is almost over and anxious for the results. the campaign, the rom my organization in boston has had to be for the last year inpatient with the polls and punditry with a race that has always been so close. tonight they're wrestling with that they say they are confident. in the end this is going to turn out to be a victory for them. constantly reminding reporters and observers that the early exit polls are often in the first wave completely reversed by the real vote as the official ballots are actually tallied. that they say will ultimately make this a victory for mitt romney. they are very pleased by the big big turnout they see in southwestern virginia as well as around roanoke and richmond. they point to a big strong turnout in the southern tier of ohio along the kentucky border. a big republic bastian. they talk about the i 4 corridor in florida where historically the republic vote has always been strongest. they say these are all reasons for them to it expect perhaps a late night but positive results. those are the three states that they think if they get

them in their corner they have got all they need to win the election in the long run. it is a night of great anxiousness and yet they are very confident. today mitt romney himself said intellectually and emotionally he has always believed he would win it i talked to one very close romney advisor who said yeah, it could be a late night. we have been waiting for this for the last five years. megyn? >> megyn: carl cameron, what's another night? thank you. >> bret: now over to chief white house correspondent ed henry who is in chicago. ed? >> bret, good to see you. they're expecting a long night here as welling. one of the president's top advisors told me they think a state like florida when you show those results being so tight, they are expecting that not to be called for several hours from now. i spoke to a second advisor to the president who said he is in no rush to get over here to the mccormick place where they are going to eventually have some sort of a celebration, not sure if it's a victory one yet or not. but behind me on that stage is where the president will eventually speak. we expect at some point tonight. what he is doing right now, about an hour ago he wrapped up a series of satellite

interviews. he was doing local affiliates. battlegrounds like colorado, trying last minute to make his sales pitch and get out the vote. i'm told by advisor he will eventually make his way to the fairmont hotel, huddle with advisors. right now he is at his private residence here in chicago. having dinner his two young daughters was flown in with their grandmother after school today. make his way to the fairmont hotel, david axelrod, other senior advisors. in the meantime i'm told the president has been getting updates by phone, by email, et cetera. what they're saying inside the obama camp is some states like virginia they know it's tight but they think they have a strong turnout in northern virginia which is a democratic strong hold so they are hopeful they are going to win there megyn, bret? >> bret: ed, thank you. >> megyn: coming up, analysis from laura ingraham plus white house press secretary dana perino will be here. >> bret: we are minutes from the next polls closing and still waiting obviously for results in some of those key swing states as our coverage from america's election headquarters continues.

>> bret: well, that is the place they are trying to get to, the white house. 1600 pennsylvania avenue. looking live at it right now. and over at 1211 sixth avenue

here at the america's election headquarters fox news channel. we're adding up the votes to see who will get there. and we can tell you right now it is a very very close race. as we have been saying since the beginning, they are trying to get to 270. that's the magic number for electoral votes and we're waiting on some big states to come in. virginia, ohio, still too close to call. we're waiting on florida and north carolina. and pretty soon pennsylvania. heck meg we want to get to now radio talk show star laura ingraham who is live with us on the set. laura, right now obviously this is an incredibly tight election. i know that you had said that if the republics can't win against barack obama then they need to start all over again. so, tonight we're either going to find out that mitt romney beat barack obama and is going to be the next president or we are going to -- >> -- soul searching time. >> megyn: it looks like it's going to be tight either way. how do you get to the point where if he loses by a tiny

margin the republic party needs to completely rehaul or if he he wins by a tiny margin is he a hero. >> here is how i look at it to see people melting down on twitter is a fun hobby which i have been engaging in the back room over there. dick who morris is all worried. people on other networks think mitt romney is winning florida. that's happening. the background is shifting. we don't know what's going to happen. in the end we will see whether the republic party can overtake a man who oversaw 43 million people going on food stamps, unemployment at historically high levels, and 60% of the country thinking we are going in the wrong direction. the republic party should be able to defeat that, i say handily. if we are not doing that handily i think the republic party needs to take a look at itself and maybe tweak things here and there and maybe not leave issues on the table. i think romney is going to win. i have said this consistently. if you leave issues on the table you give the other team

more room to push you into the corner. >> megyn: like what? >> benghazi. we have been talking about that a lot on fox. o'reilly and i and many others. critical issue for americans if they understand it and i think more people -- the more they heard about it they are like wait a second. why is cbs releasing a transcript or, five weeks after the president said something? obama care. that really was not discussed clearly enough and specifically enough, consistently through the this campaign. paul ryan was put on the ticket and he is a budget guy. but then paul ryan was pulled back from discussing the budget. and i think issues for or catholics like the h.h.s. mandate. we talked about religious liberty that was great. you have to give it more meat. now, look, i think mitt romney ran a pretty good campaign. he had a strategy. he didn't go on a lot of fox shows. he didn't go on talk radio. it would have been nice to have him on but he had his strategy and it was play it safe. i hope play it safe is enough to beat barack obama. i think if it ends up not being successful, you will

hear a lot of people saying next time you have got to take the fight on every issue, exploit every angle and not let the other side back you into a corner. >> bret: you know, laura, though after that first debate it seemed like the republic party coalesced behind mitt romney. >> laura: right, then what happened after that? that first debate? that's the mitt romney that you want in the second debate and in the third debate and throughout the campaign. and i think everyone is like yeah, that's the romney we knew from his first road show at bain. that's the romney we knew behind closed doors. that was great. i think people like -- keep doing it. and for some reason i think they, again, they played it a little too conservatively. i think that -- he wins, maybe he doesn't win by the margin that he would have if he kept that same momentum up. don't get cowed. keep that same momentum up. meg heck there was a lot wondering whether obama didn't go hard after obama on -- he needed women. was there a question like looking like a warmonger.

>> laura: i think romney says, you know, look, war should always be a last resort. it's really an awful thing for a country to pay for and for soldiers and marines and other servicemen die for. certain circumstances we have to do that i'm going to use military power very judiciously and as a last resort. let me tell you something, we are not going to let this issue go by the american people and push an investigation off until november 7th. look, i think romney ran a pretty tight campaign. he has a lot of smart people working for him. we won't know until later on tonight whether the strategy was right. i hope it was right for the country. >> bret: what you looking for the rest of night and what's important. >> the turnout is a positive thing for america. i think it ultimately is a positive thing for republicans. one of romney wants top lawyers in cedar rapids, iowa i went to law school with. really smart guy messaged me a couple of hours ago and said cedar rapids, which is a democrat counties and meanwhile the precincts coming in republic, republic,

republic. he said none of us expected that. that was wild. now, i don't think romney is going to win iowa. but that is an interesting sign. i think we are going to see that in some of these other precincts coming out in virginia. i think we will see that as well. fascinating. >> megyn: laura ingraham, thank you. >> thank you. >> megyn: thank you so much for being here. polls in 14 states close including the critical state of -- colorado. >> bret: o-h-i-o. >> bret: i'm team of reporters out in the field with the campaign. keep it here on fox.

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>> an election alert. fox news can project that bob casey will hold his job, the senator of pennsylvania will hold off a republican challenge from tom smith. casey is a first-term senator, ever shrinking first-teem democrats. smith was said to be closing in recent days, but fox news can now project that casey will hold off that challenge. we don't know what this means for mitt romney's campaign in the state of pennsylvania. we do know that they were holding out hopes for some of the outside philadelphia area to turn red. >> megyn: they thought it was an outside shot, this race, and apparently it didn't work out for them. i want to get reaction to all of the results that we know thus far or do not. from dana perino, who is co-host

of the five and former democratic campaign manager bob beckel, also co-host of "the five" and former campaign director for the regular again campaign, ed rollins. i want to bring in the editor of the daily caller.com. story, tucker, almost forgot about it. bob, let me start with you and your thoughts what we've seen so far and not being able to call all six of the critical swing states. >> well, how close north carolina is. i expected it to be wider. and i'm surprised how close virginia is. that was one i conceded myself to romney. ohio looks a lot better as a democrat as a republican to me tonight. but, you know, pennsylvania is a classy case of where you didn't take care of your home base. the problem was the obama people thought they had it in the bag and they didn't do the ground work there and let romney come in and they are paying a price for that. >> we are seconds away. we are a few seconds away from

the closings at 9:00 p.m. eastern time, and we have a number of closings and a number of calls to do in just eight seconds. >> megyn: there are a bunch of them so hold on to your seats, folks. we actually are getting some information in. and it is 9:00 p.m. on the east coast and polls are closed in another 14 states. fox news can now project that president obama will win mitt romney's native state of michigan, worth 16 electoral votes. that's a disappointment for romney whose late father was once michigan's father and ran a car company in detroit. >> bret: it's too soon to say who will win a trio of battleground states where the polls just closed," wisconsin, minnesota and colorado. and wisconsin and minnesota, president obama led in preelection polls for virtually the entire campaign. in colorado he slipped into a narrow lead just a week ago.

fox news can now project, though, that mitt romney will win the following states. >> megyn: texas, the second largest electoral prize of the evening. they have 38 electoral votes, second only to california. along with louisiana, home to a top romney ally, governor bobby jindal and a key component. >> bret: kansas goes to romney. >> megyn: 6 electoral votes. and north dakota who has had booming years thanks to the the discovery of oil reserves. >> megyn: and south dakota, home of george mcgovern who died last month. >> bret: and wyoming, the home state of dick cheney, will go to mitt romney. >> megyn: romney will also win four of the five electoral votes in nebraska. that's the only other state besides maine that splits its electoral votes. in 2008 president obama won one vote.

this time around it's too soon to say who will win that last vote. >> bret: fox news also can now project that president obama will win new york here in new york, a democratic stronghold that struggled to conduct today's election actually because of the results and effects of hurricane sandy. but they managed to do it and president obama won. >> they are letting folks go into any polling station to cast their ballot. with everything else they suffered we didn't want them to suffer the loss of not being able to vote. >> bret: we said earlier about the virginia lines. if you were in line, you could stay in line and then vote. it wasn't actually extending the voting time. they just let the people who were in line vote and then they delayed the actual reporting of that vote but we are now starting to see virginia numbers in big, big bushels. >> megyn: chunks. yet we still have no states to call among the critical swing

states. we are waiting for florida, new hampshire, pennsylvania, north carolina, virginia, ohio. these are the ones we haven't gotten anything in. >> that's the game. we have been talking about it about a year and a half. rest of the country was nice and these are the ones that matter. that's how you get to 270 if you are mr. romney. >> megyn: do you find any interesting about probable cause balm winning michigan? >> no, i don't. i always thought they were a tough hunt and the only reason he went for it is because of his family connection. but some of the states, the ones we talked about, we need to win to get to 270. >> tucker, your thoughts? >> i think that part of the spread you are seeing now in states with large white color suburban populations, and that would very much include virginia, and also pennsylvania outside of philadelphia, there was a battle going on that was basically uncovered by the press, was ignored. it was a push by the obama campaign to emphasize social issues, specifically abortion.

it looks like in the early returns that that has borne fruit. the gender gap has been stubborn for gov. romney and i think that's part of the reason. they hit it hard on radio and television. go to these states and that's the first thing you notice, abortion was the issue. but it was a fact and apparently an effective one. >> what do you make of that's correct the advantage barack obama had with women the last time around we don't have the numbers in yet but it seems he's winning with the women. >> i think they mapped it out early. remember the hhs man date that was going to change the way that catholic institutions would have to deal with contraception. those first impressions, that was not only just the first radio ads, the first tv but they had it from the white house. it's powerful. eats difficult to beat an incumbent. when you have the whole weight of the federal government behind you to change policy like that, it makes a difference. which is stunning to me. like in pennsylvania, 90,000

fewer people are working today than when president obama took office in january of 2009, a 7.9% unemployment rate. yet abortion, which nobody was bringing up, is affecting people's votes. >> bob, married women go for mitt romney by more than 20 points according to the exit polls. unmarried wage for president obama by more than 30 points. working class whites go for romney by nearly 30 points. union households break for obama by 16. >> right. a couple things you mentioned, you start with the woman's vote. republicans generally do well with white males and i'm not so sure romney is beating that normal spread that he has had here. but i'm not surprised about single women. that's the goal of obama's people from the beginning. the real key is how much of the percentage of the electorate is going to be minorities and hispanics and blacks and other minorities. if the republicans can't get 74,

75% of the vote being white, i don't think mitt romney can win. >> what do you make of it, because right now it's at 73. >> it does not bode well for romney. >> really? as an outsider, one percent? >> let's remember, the last elections he were 78% white, then 76% white, and it's been falling down. as the his hispanic population has grown tremendously. as a result of that the republican party has depended on having a white base and they frankly at this stage of the game, unless they get it up to 75, 76, i don't think they can do it. >> i hard to believe the woman's right to choose was the force of the latino community. they have to do a better job of communicating to them but the deciding point cannot possibly be a women's right to choose. >> what people are missing is there's been massive changes in the native born population. the deemography is different. there are more unmarried adult

women in the u.s. than married women. that's never been true. and the second is the decline in church going. one-fifth of the country identifies as having no religion. that's a huge boon to the democrats. >> and this is a national popular vote. this is what we call the heat map. these are actual precincts, and you see the red, those are obviously republican. the blue are democrats. and the yellow, that is a spread of three percentage points so those are yellow precincts. just an interesting map. go ahead. >> i was going to say i agree with tucker about this thing. the demographic changes. if it's a question about abortion, that's not to their advantage b you until the republicans can breakthrough the hispanic vote the way george bush did, they have a small chance of winning national elections. >> this election is supposed to be about the economy and somehow is got offtrack.

the democrats very effective targeted among the key states here. but at the end of the day and why single women usually have a harder time economically, the widows or singles or the great many in the workforce, that's the issue. eye an economic issue and we basically lose it on the economic value and let the democrats take the sidebar issues away from us. >> it's interesting romney couldn't stay on the economy for my len of time before something interrupted it. that was one of his main pitches but something came along and it was like another rabbit was let out of the white house so he followed along. >> the average voter had no idea they were doing this. the average voters had no idea they were running a campaign based on abortion because the press didn't cover it. it might be worth covering it. >> but a lot of things go on in campaigns that don't go on television, called direct mail and talk radio. >> and talk radio people don't think about it enough. either a lot of television ads

we saw and we played a lot of them here, but radio ads are so important. my sister in in in -- in a swing state said on radio they were being targeted so much. when the exet polls came out in 2004, the exit polls made ows crumple, but patience, grasshopper. >> dana perino with wise advice there. >> thank you. back in a minute. >> we are still waiting on virginia, exactly what is happening on the ground there with the down and the feeling. let's go down to mike emmanuel in richmond. >> good evening. there's a lot of nervous energy in the room, a lot of tension here at republican party headquarters in richmond. the reason is because they have only announced that eric cantor was re-elected. no surprise as the house majority leader. they are waiting to figure out whether this state will go for mitt romney or for barack obama.

they are also wait to go figure out whether the highly contested senate race between george allen, the republican, and jim cane, the democrat, which way that will break. bottom line, there have been long lines all there. there were projections of record voter turnout. as many as 4 million people expected to vote in virginia. larry gave us that number. i can tell you from talking to democratic officials, they say there are as many as 500 people still in line in virginia beach voting at this hour, more than two hours after polls closed. they say there are several hundred people in line at locations in norfolk, virginia, as well. so republican officials here have told me, bottom line, people who have been in line since before 7:00 will get to cast their ballots, but there's a lot of anxiety here because nobody noise how those votes will break and how it will affect the contract cal race for the presidency and a key senate

race as well, guys. >> the key counties around washington, lowder, fairfax, prince william, those are key to watch, especially fairfax if the president can run up the total there compared to his 2008 total. >> and the other thing about virginia, there is a tight senate race between tim cain and george allen and we can't call that either. >> a most unusual senate race because both former governors, so they have something like 95% name i. d. in virginia and it was hard to move the polls. people either liked georgeal on the other hand they liked jim cain so that's been one to watch all along. and the presidential race, 13 electoral votes up for grabs, it's been hotly contested. we had paul ryan here this afternoon in the richmond area trying to push it across the finish line. we had mitt romney here yesterday making several visits and also vice president buysen

making several visits. and it's not finish more than two hours after the polls closed. >> mike is live in richmond. thank you. the machine down there for governor bob mcdonald is also a big deal. republicans are pushing. >> want to talk about just a point, expand on a point we were discussing earlier, and this is young voters. the exit poll information thought far is that the president is actually down seven points among young voters compared to 2008. we are being told that they have turn out in as great a number as they did four years ago, but they are are not supporting barack obama to the extent he did. he is down 7 points among them compared to 2008. want to go to bill hemmer. what can you tell us? >> i want to take you to four different states quickly and point out what is developing on the map. let's start with virginia. coal country is being dominated, red is republican, blue

democrat, is dominated now by mitt romney here. but with the polling lines, the hours being extended, we don't have a good grasp what is happening in fairfax county. and really as a gauge for the state we need to see what happens here across the river there from washington d.c. let me come over to pennsylvania. this will start to get a little more attention, too. i want to draw your attention southwest of pittsburgh. this is washington county. these are reagan democrats. they vote on energy, they vote on coal. too early to call right now based on the results we get right now but this is a county that serves as a bellwether to figure out what is the pulse right now in the western part of the state there in pennsylvania. pop on over to ohio. why is this too close to call? the southwestern part of the state, we mentioned this throughout the night, right here hamilton county, cincinnati, ohio is still blue. if mitt romney wants to win ohio, he has to take hamilton county and turn it red as it had been for the past 40 years.

come down to florida right now. i'll show you what i'm seeing here. last time we talk we talk about the i-4 corridor, a mix of red and blue. that could go either way. right now you are at 78% of the vote reported and reported in here. look where florida is and their 29 electoral votes. it's 50% to 50%. 3,000,393-some-odd-thousand to 3,393,000 here. >> we are watching the polling liens a bit earlier tonight. in miami they went down the street and around the corner. you saw our fox affiliate showing us the lines in miami. this is some of the tally we are getting. two to one for the president over mitt romney. basic comparison over 2008, watch how the numbers change. he did pretty well at half a million votes, 500,000.

at the moment in 2012 you are shy of that by 180,000, 190,000 in miami-dade. a quit fly around in the big battle grounds. ohio 18 electoral votes, pennsylvania 20 and virginia at 13. back here in a moment on the board. >> megyn: bill, thank you. >> bret: fox news election alert. fox news can now project that president obama will win the state of pennsylvania and it's 20 electoral votes, denying mitt romney an opportunity to post that state that's been reliably democratic for decades. it's voted democratic in the last five elections. in 2008 senator obama beat senator mccain by 11 percentage points in pennsylvania. but there was hope, according to the romney campaign and the republicans on the ground, as you look there you see the vote total and the check mark. we are calling this state and the percent of vote in was only 7% of the total vote in.

people say how can you do that? well, we can do that because the decision desk has looked at the counties and the specifics, the raw vote total coming in and the exit polls that we have in and they have determined above 97% accuracy according to them, that we can project that barack obama will win. what you are looking at now are the electoral votes. the map is starting to fill in with that big blue pennsylvania with 20 electoral votes it bumps president obama up to 147. mitt romney to 149. again, the magic number is 270 to go to the white house. a big win for barack obama in pennsylvania. >> megyn: back in 2000 gore won it. in 2004 kerry won it and 2008 obama won it. sometimes pennsylvania is referred to as fool's gold for republicans. we were talking about it earlier on our afternoon show, it's sort of like the new girl in town who comes to the dance and sort of draws attention away from ohio,

you know that's what pennsylvania did and everyone started to look over there, and then no. >> bret: as charlie and the football. the republicans sometimes the football is. >> megyn: even if peanuts related, makes me uncomfortable. >> bret: let's bring back the panel. bob beckel, the democrats thought there was a vulnerability there. >> there was. in the western part of the state in the coal area you see obama huh held that vote. i think the most important story here is florida. if florida stays this close it triggers an automatic recount at 1%, if there is not 1% difference between them. now up to 70% of the vote in and there's a dead heat, it will take a lot of push in the rest of the state to get over to 1% spread. you may be looking at a recount in florida. >> and now with pennsylvania out, and a lot of the media they were losing actually went into ohio, too, the pittsburgh side.

but the formula is still the original are formula we talked about a year ago. you have to win florida, you have to win north carolina, you have to win virginia and ohio and something else and something else is probably colorado and other new hampshires out there. it's still very do-able but now it's warfare. >> when you hear the stats from the exit poll, independence, president obama 50%, mitt romney 48%, what do you hear? >> it's problematic. i think you are seeing it in part in the results in the senate race where senator nelson was re-elect asked ran what i thought was a very capable challenger, long-time congressman whose father was a senator and he got his clock cleaned. it tells you florida is a dynamic state. there's a lot of population strength in florida. i'm struck by the corridor outside tampa. if you are the romney campaign you don't want to see that. one thing about pennsylvania,

there's no state with a greater internal split greater than pennsylvania. something like one-third of the nra membership lives in pennsylvania. it's a truly conservative state outside of philadelphia and parts of pittsburgh. >> it's like three states. >> exactly. >> just want to double back before we go further because we have not called new hampshire. >> i was going to say thank you for that. >> good, i'm glad. >> and florida, just remember this, there are two time zones there. panhandle is reporting in relatively late. someone could pick up a margin above 1%. i hope they do. i'm almost willing to give it away at this stage. >> i gave you minnesota 28 years ago today. >> i know that. >> how does it work? we don't have -- ohio is still too close to call and florida is too close to call and virginia. but now that pennsylvania has gone blue, if ohio goes blue,

what's mitt romney's path to the white house? >> it's puff. >> rocky and very windy. >> do you think colorado? >> i think colorado is okay for romney. >> but you want to get new mexico at that point. >> if he lost ohio he would make custer look like he was in a good spot. there ain't no road out of that. it's just not going to happen if he loses ohio. >> we haven't lost california for a couple years. maybe there's something going on there. >> and with all seriousness, now pennsylvania is called for the democrats, that was the escape valve. >> we have to look at the southeast corridor, win those three states, four states and win ohio. >> aren't you surprised there? >> it was close last time and close again. >> north carolina is not the state people remember. they are a research triangle. immigration in north carolina. it's not classic.

>> the issue of the auto buyout, this is important to some folks. to the folks it was important to they voted overwhelmingly for barack obama. they had that debate, the two candidates, which this became an issue. and romney kept saying i did support some government help. he wanted to help them with some federal guarantees once they cam out of bankruptcy and barack obama said no, you didn't, and romney said check the record, and obama said we will, we will check the record, and it turned out romney was right about that. they said let's provide some federal guarantees once they get out of the bankruptcy. but it seems like the message, the headlines the new york times put on that. >> well, president obama has been running on the auto bailout since january of 2009. romney had a late start. >> without the auto bailout he won be in ohio. he would lose ohio. the fact is romney was stuck on

that and he's never going to get out of it. >> hole the thought because we just had some breaking news. we have an important projection it make right here. fox news can now project that republicans will retain control of the u.s. house of representatives. the democrats fell short of their goal of picking up 25 house seats, which would have given them control of the 435 member legislative chamber but there are now early indications that republicans may actually pick up seats. >> bret: america's election headquarters continues after this short break. everyone has goals.

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>> bret: a fox news election alert. fox news can now project that the state of wisconsin will go to president obama. fox news is projecting that wisconsin will go to the democrats, the home state of gop vice presidential nominee paul

ryan has voted democratic since 1988, but there was hope this year that republicans could pull off a win, especially of a governor scott walker's effort, successful effort to withhold and hold off a recall effort there. the organization might of republicans was believed to be strong enough that mitt romney could compete there. some criticized the campaign for not putting wisconsin on the map earlier for visits and advertisements, but barack obama and the democrats will pull out a big win in wisconsin. so now it comes down to ohio and florida, two states that we are waiting on, two states we've talked about really for years about being the center of this election. >> megyn: i within to get back to our panel and also add to it. former state department official and fox news contributor liz cheney joins us now. your thoughts on what has happened tonight? >> it feels like deja vu in so many ways. you watch how close things are and how tight it is in florida.

the last i saw was 1200 vote difference basically. and the panhandle are the votes that are still out. i would urge everybody that could very easily go our way. virginia very tight. ohio very tight. it reminds me now a little bit of 2000. i don't think we are going to have 37-day recount, but i think it will end up being very, very close victory for gov. romney. >> you hold me earlier on the afternoon show about your experience in 2000 when the news came in that florida had gone to gore. >> yeah, it was not great. you can imagine when they called florida for gore, that was a clear sign to us that we had lost. but it didn't take very long until the networks all said, wait a sec, we got it wrong. and what they got wrong was calling the state before the voters in the panhandle, who are republican, had voted. there's one county, as i understand it, that still hasn't reported yet and that's a county in the panhandle. >> megyn: and the florida results have to be within

one-half a percentage point in order for there to be a recount. let's not use the r-word yet. >> bret: let's go back to wisconsin. bob, there was real hope in the republican party, especially with paul ryan on the tick, they could pull off wisconsin as a winner. >> it's a heavily oftennized state. the bob wacker was a small percentage of the presidential vote. couldn't make the comparison. it was apples and oranges, frankly. that was a state i would be shocked if it went republican. >> megyn: but republicans liked the way the recall worked out, you but they had made that, scott walker made that an issue saying you shouldn't recall me. the recall itself is an issue. so he successfully beat that back. but democrats won a few of those recall elections. so how high were the hopes of winning wisconsin? >> scott walker actually, i think one of the reasons he won was because he was getting results. there was enough time about make

the decision about the changing of the formulation of the c contract to actually seeing things improving on the balance sheet for the state government. the turnout was low in the recall election. but earlier you said pennsylvania is like the new girl at the dance but wisconsin is like that for republicans, as well. i would say those criticizing the romney campaign for not putting in as many resources as you want in it, any state you are going to hear those complaints. but in wisconsin it always is one of those ones, it's like the one that got away. i think they were smart to do what they did and they gave it a great shot >> megyn: i want to ask you, tucker. we talk a lot about media coverage in the election and it looks like so far the voters favor barack obama or give him double-digit kudos on being able to handle an international crisis. eye not they don't believe mitt romney can but they think obama can.

does that relate? >> come on, you can debate the effect of press coverage. there's been a lot of presses elected despite the will of the press, george w. bush, ronald reagan, nonhad support from the media but they won anyway. and the benghazi stories that's been kept alive only by a couple news organizations, an ambassador was murdered and it was trashed and on fire and it's ignored? even as its being debated on the another of the president saying it was not a terror attack, et cetera, et cetera, yes. and in other ways the press coverage has added points to the president's scoreboard. i would say this, though, no matter how this election winds up, the republican party i think does need to think through it's appeal the way it delivers its message, what it stands for. it won't be enough to just win the press, but i think, you

know, they should. >> stand by. >> as we look at the electoral map and electoral vote at this hour, just calling pennsylvania for president obama and just calling wisconsin. there you see it. 153-153. 270 electoral votes needed. that map is starting to fill in. you see the east coast there? florida, north carolina, virginia and then just over there to the best, to the north, i guess that would be west, ohio. those are the big ones right there. that could decide it. >> megyn: that's the thing. in look at the states of that been called, we haven't called any of the ones of that been at the heart of the discussion over the past year in this campaign. all those critical swing states have yet to be decided. pennsylvania popped up late, wisconsin popped up late as possibilities, but the real states that these two guys have been arguing about for months, two close to call. >> bret: we are looking live now

at romney headquarters in boston. they are waiting for those results. let's take a live look at chicago. that's obama headquarters in chicago. coming up next chris wallace, karl rove, joe trippi, breaking down the numbers live from america's election headquarters. [ woman ] i don't know. i just can't imagine

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introducing the new droid razr maxx hd by motorola. now more than ever droid does. >> megyn: welcome back. we have a fox news election report out of the indiana senate race where fox news can now project that democrat joe donnelly will beat republican richard murdoch. this is an open seat. it's been a republican seat since 1977, but the democrat who is -- he has a reputation as a moderate blue dog democrat has now defeated the republican candidate richard mourdock. mourdock came under fire for a comment he made in one of the debates where he seemed to suggest that rape that results in pregnancy is something that

god intended, those were his words, and that turn the race in donnelly's favorite. donnelly known as a blue dog democrat and he will take over that senate seat. that's officially a turnover. >> bret: there was a lot of anxt when they lost that because lugar was to sail to re-election and donnelly wasn't considering challenges at one point because it was going to be such an uphill battle. but now they pick up that seat and that makes the race for the senate for the republicans pretty tough. let's go now to fox news sunday host chris wallace. >> thanks. we've been talking about the significance of a couple of calls you just made, pennsylvania for obama and wisconsin for obama and the significance of that is that plan b for romney to get to 270 votes if he would not win ohio but win wisconsin and colorado,

that's 19 electoral votes and he could win the presidency. plan c, 20 electoral votes, that's gone now. >> bret: forgive me but i think there's only plan a left. he has to win ohio. >> three-two-one. >> but ohio is the bridge he's got to go through. all roads to the white house lead through ohio for both of these guys. >> absolutely. there's no other way now. ohio is it. >> one of the things that is surprise to go me is some of the democratic-leaning twelve sub states like wisconsin, like pennsylvania, we've been able to call. we haven't been able to call some of the republican leaning tossup states by florida and north carolina. you have been look at florida, what do you see? >> this thing has gone back and forth in the last half-hour about six times i think it is. it is now separated by 22,000 votes with obama in the lead. but again, we have, as liz cheney said earlier, santa rosa

county, which was a big republican county in the panhandle has not yet come in. we have about 7.2 million votes cast and we probably have another 1.2 to 1.4 million to go. i think at the end of the day it ends up being in the romney camp but it ends up being there by probably less than 100,000 votes. >> you think florida will end up with romney? >> i do. >> why? >> well, miami-dade, broward is palm beach are doing better than they did every other time. but hillsborough and orange county are doing slightly worse for obama. they are the two bigger metropolitan counties. and obama is doing slightly worse there but not enough to shift the state. but in the outlying county like seminole, romney is running far enough ahead. >> i'm not there yet because so far where romney is improving he's improving by around two percentage points in each of the counties he's improving in.

he lost -- excuse me, mccain lost the state by 2.8 points last time around. and at the same time, karl is right, you look at miami-dade, brow ward, palm beach, obama really making significant gains, three, four points in some of those counties. this thing is going to go down to the wire. we may have a florida 2000 dead heat kind of situation there. it's going to be that close there that late in the day. >> one of the things we brought up was the fact romney has a bit of the lead in the popular vote and it's neck and neck at this point in the electoral vote, do you think we could see another 2000 in that regard where one guy wins, in this case romney winning the popular vote and perhaps not the electoral vote? >> we've been sitting here and i've been watching it. it will be something i want to watch all night long because you are seeing romney keep about a 1 million vote lead over obama on the popular vote and that's far into the evening. we are still early in the evening and there's colorado, big states coming up. so is texas and some states that

are going to give a lot of votes to romney. i think the popular vote is really interesting now it is not jive with some of the other states called so far. >> do you agree with that, karl? >> i think so. but we have a lot of popular vote to go. we have texas coming in, we have california coming in, a bunch of big population centers that will take it either way. back to florida for a second. as we literally sat here, palm beach now flipped around so it's still being won by obama because he's winning it less than he did last time around and romney is now getting about three points better than he got four years ago. so, i mean, we are going to be watching florida much like we did in 2000. hopefully not for 36 days but we will be watching it for hours more. >> folks, just one other interesting historical fact, because of the fact they lost wisconsin and they lost massachusetts, this will be the first time a national political ticket, both the presidential and vice presidential candidates, both lost their home states since 1972, the democrats

george mcgovern and sergeant shriver. >> let's go live to the romney headquarters. he had ed gillispie introducing on the phone senator rob portman in ohio. let's listen for a second. >> it's been a great opportunity to get to see the campaign from the inside, get to see some incredible work being done by everybody in the room tonight and so many other volunteers around the country. i want to draw attention, if i could, to the amazing effort we have put forth here in ohio. i'm chairman of the campaign and i'm here tonight with columbus, ohio with many of our team members and staff and volunteers. scott jennings, who is our state director, has done a terrific job working under mitch and matt. we have knocked on more doors and done more telephone calls than any campaign in the history of ohio and we've knocked on more doors than all doors in

2008. we have made more phone calls by far than in 2008. we've made more than twice as many. what we have done essentially, we have channeled the energy and enthusiasm that mitt and paul have created out there and encouraged people to get involved through our system, working with romney for president, and seeming leslie with the state party and put together a grass roots network. we good it with fewer resources than the contracts had at first and certainly with less team because we had to go through a primary process first. i'm proud of the effort of our volunteers, i'm proud of the way we worked with boston and everybody tonight ought to be extremely proud of the work that you have done. i'm happy to tell that you in ohio we are seeing some good results. we had good turnout in southwest ohio and some of the swing areas we have some early voting results in now. places like lake county that some of you follow or hamilton county we are seeing better than

expected early voting results for us. and frankly worse than expected for the democrats. we've also seen some good results in coal country tonight, belmont county. so we are doing what we expected to do in energy counties in ohio. and that encourages me a lot. you remember during the campaign that mitt talk a lot about this friday night -- >> okay. that's senator rob portman calling in via skype talking to the headquarters from the romney campaign. giving an update what the numbers were looking like in ohio. he still sounds encouraged for republicans saying they should be encouraged. but we will wait and see. >> megyn: i wonder if that's unusual? i've never seen that happen before. >> bret: to go the call in? >> megyn: the skype from one of the state campaign chairs giving folks an update on the counties? it's quite helpful, actually, telling us how they feel the count is coming in county to county and our decision desk are

crunching their own numbers on that score. >> bret: we are glad to bring it to you. we have an election alert right now. fox news can project in the senate race for wisconsin, the democrat, tammy baldwin, will win, defeating tommy thompson, former human service secretary for george w. bush. baldwin, the democrat, this was a tight race. but she going in had a lead in the polls. baldwin is a seven-term member of the house based out of the liberal stronghold of madison, wisconsin. she, and president obamaa, will win in the state of wisconsin, hope to vp nominee paul ryan. >> i want to tell you we bra the news to you earlier that the republicans will now retain control of the house and we are just getting word that speaker boehner will remain speaker boehner and he will make remarks momentarily. we are getting a bit of flavor for what he's going to say, saying with this vote the

american people have made clear there is no man date for raising tax rates and goes on from there. i want to go to martha mccallum. >> hi there, migin. as you said, house republicans, as expected, have held on to their majority. it would have required 25 wins for democrats to flip power in the house so it's not a big surprise that has not happened. but really what is developing in the senate is a very big night for the democrats because there were about nine tossup race that is we've been watching very closely. we know about five of those. you mentioned the indiana race that was lost by mourdock. we now have the race you just showed us with tammy baldwin where tommy thompson who was catching fire toward then of that race, some money started to flow in his direction for thnt race that's correct one was not to be won either. let's look at florida. bill nelson, the democrat there, he's the incumbent. he holds his seat. he was running against

representative connie mack. that's a no change issue in florida. and you have the wrestling match we walked, linda mcmahon ran for a second time in the senate seat there. this time it was for independent's joe leiberman's seat. he's retiring. last time she lost to the attorney general richard bloomenthal. this time it was linda mcmahon. a rushing blow for her tonight. that was a seat that was independent. now it is a democrat seat. and ohio, as well, a lot will be said tonight about whether or not coat tails are in effect. but in the ohio race the democrat sherrod brown keeps his seat. he defeated josh mandel, who also looked like he was catching a little bit of attention toward the end of this race. got a lot of gop money that migrated from some of the other races. mourdock race and akin race but

the incumbent will stay there as well. no change there. we will keep a watch on all these throughout the night a few more senate races to be decided tonight and the how, a we said, remains in republican hands. >> all right, martha. thank you. >> bret: as we head to break we want to update you. we are waiting on the big states. one is the commonwealth. virginia and florida. there you look at the vote total in florida. you heard karl rove and joe trippi talking about it. look how close that is right there. they should put up the difference so we don't are to do the math. >> it's close. >> close enough there. is speaker john boehner. let's listen in for a little bit. >> help bring our team to victory. and, of course, i want to thank mitt romney and paul ryan. who carried the banner of our party with grace, vision,

strength and dignity, and most of all we want to thank the american people. for over two years our house majority has been the primary line of defense for the american people against a government that spends too much, taxes too much, and certainly borrows too much when it's left unchecked. in the face of a staggering national debt that threatens our children's future, our majority passed a budget that begins to solve the problems. while others chose inaction in the face of this threat, we offered solutions. the american people want solutions. tonight they have responded by renewing our house republican majority. [applause] >> you know, with this vote the american people also have made clear that there is no man date for raising tax rates. if americans want -- the americans want solutions that will ease burdens on small businesses and let our economy grow.

listen, we stand ready to work with any willing partner, democratic, independent or otherwise who shares a commitment to getting those things done. listen, we are humbled by having again to be entrusted by the american people with the responsibility of leading the people's house." we will neverty it for granted and we will never let you down. god bless you and god bless our country! [cheers and applause] >> bret: speaker john boehner talking about retaining control of the u.s. house of representatives. it looks like the republicans actually may actually pick up seats in that. at one point democrats were talking about taking control of the house, winning 25 seats this year. that obviously not happening. on the senate side it looks like democrats will hold on to control of the senate. we are waiting for a couple more races here. but it looks like we are going to have a divided congress

again. >> megyn: we we will check with our panel after the break. don't go away.

>> megyn: fox news election alert in massachusetts. fox news can project that democratic challenger eye les beth warren will unseat scott brown, the incumbent. that's a democratic pickup in the senate. if democratic senate incumbents on the west coast hold their seats tonight, like they are expected to do, this means the u.s. senate will remain in democratic hands. this was the seat once held by ted kennedy. scott brown took it over in the midst of the healthcare debate. although he has been a moderate in the senate, not often towing the party line, he was defeated by elizabeth warren tonight and that's not totally unexpected. she was leading in the latest polls, although it was a hard-fought contest because there were some issues about her academic history and her representation about her native-american status and so on. but in any event, elizabeth warren will go to the senate.

>> bret: fox news can project that president obama will win the state of new hampshire and it's four electoral votes. gov. romney was contesting in new hampshire. in fact, that was his last stop on his campaign trail. he gave a speech in new hampshire. started his campaign in new hampshire and ended it there. of course, new hampshire holds the first in the nation primary but president obama will win according to the fox news decision desk. there were a lot of efforts to really win this state. you see the percentage there in. just to explain again, a lot of people have been tweeting, this is the percentage of the vote in so far, 18%. that's the raw total you see on the screen. but our decision desk can look at the counties and the precincts that are still out and they can look at the exit polls that they had from today, and then they can see the stipulation that they are going to call these states for the

different candidates. they have a 97% certainty by the time they get to that projection. so with that, new hampshire now adds the four electoral votes. there you see the electoral map. president obama with 157, gov. romney with 153 and 270 is the magic number needed. >> megyn: let's pick one that massachusetts senate race. we will go back to new hampshire in a minute. but i want to pick up your thoughts on elizabeth warren taking over the seat held by scott brown. >> if scott brown can't win in massachusetts, no candidate can. he's about as liberal as you can be and still remain a senator. running against someone caught lying about her ethnic heritage, and was pretty much on the far left spectrum even for the democratic party and he lost. one other thing, the one victory tonight so far is the republican victory in the house. the republicans will maintain control of the house representatives. i'm pretty sure talking to

crashes and i have been all week on the subject, this means the end of nancy pelosi's career in leader shay. there's opposition to her. she's been an effective speaker but i think it's over for her and she'll not be a leadership in the next congress. >> republicans are looking at this tonight and say what should they take away from it? >> florida, virginia, ohio still out. very, very close. i think we need to make sure we are staying here watching, reminding people how close they are. also, you are taking someone like elizabeth warren who depended to be a cherokee indian, i would stack her up any day against some of our young rising stars, newark -- marco rubio, paul ryan. >> the united states senate is phenomenal. there's no reason the republicans didn't pick up seats in the senate. the democrats were exposed. >> all right, panel, thank you

very much. >> the next batch of states closings and we have sarah palin incoming up.

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♪ vo: wherever our trains go, the economy comes to life. norfolk southern. one line, infinite possibilities. >> megyn: welcome back, folks to america's election headquarters. it is just about 10:00 here on the east coast. and we are going to have our next batch of race calls moment tear live. it's about 40 seconds. >> bret: polls about to close in four more states, including the swing state of nevada. we are awaiting still for more results out of virginia. some interesting results coming out of there so far extremely tight. ohio and florida. believe it or not, florida is neck and neck at this hour still cannot call florida.

>> megyn: just to catch you up, we originally could not call pennsylvania or new hampshire but we have now projected barack obama will win both of those states and we will wait to see on this three critical states that could make or break this election in terms of florida, ohio, and virginia. but first this: ♪ >> bret: it is 10:00 p.m. on the east coast and polls have closed in another four states including two of the tightest toss-ups in the nation iowa and nevada. in iowa, the state where barack obama began and ended his re-election campaign the president has a slight lead over mitt romney. it is too soon to project which candidate will win the hawkeye state worth six electoral votes. >> megyn: the president has a similar lead in the state of nevada which is also worth 6 electoral votes. the fox news decision desk will wait for more vote tallies before it can actually project a winner in nevada. >> bret: fox can project that mitt romney, a mormon, will win the state of utah which is

home to more mormons than any other state. romney will win montana according to fox exit polls. >> megyn: check in with bill hemmer at the billboard. take us to the what-if scenarios we are looking at right now. >> bill: good evening megyn and bret. i want our viewers to be clear what i have done with the map. red is republic. blue is democrat. when we started the night we had what we considered 11 battleground states. those are states that based on poll are just frankly too close to call. as we move into the 10:00 eastern time hour of the night, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven battleground states marked in gray. now, what i have done is taken the states that we expected to go democrat, already made them blue and given them to barack obama electoral college count and the states we expected to go to mitt romney to give it to the governor to give you an idea of where we are. remember 270 votes that's the magic number right now.

based on the map behind me now, i have got the president 246 and mitt romney 187. so how does governor romney now get to 270 at this point in the night? come on over here. okay. florida is still outstanding about 18,000 vote difference. say he comes back there and overtakes that lead for barack obama, that would give him 29 electoral votes and now you are at 216. now you start to see the map in motion, how important the mid-atlantic states are now. 15 electoral votes in north carolina. if he is able to win there, a state that barack obama took from republicans four years ago, he he would be at 231. now in virginia, 13 electoral votes if he were to win there now 244. ohio is yet to be called. what if he comes back and wins in the buckeye state at 18 now you are at 262 and only 8 away from 270. even with all this, if you go four for four on these states you would still need to win maybe a colorado to put you over 271.

again this is a what if scenario we are trying to develop throughout the night. if i take these away right now. say i take away colorado and ohio from governor romney and punch up the president right here at 246, what if he were to come in here and take ohio's 18 electoral votes, he is only at 264. still six shy of the magic number. then he would only need iowa, that would do it. or it could be nevada. that would do it as well. the point is, in this scenario, at this point in the race, it is much easier for barack obama to get to the white house than it is for mitt romney. but, again, we are waiting on florida, north carolina, virginia, ohio, colorado, and just a couple more. we'll find out shortly. back to you. >> megyn: bill, thanks. >> bret: that's helpful to give perspective where we are on the night and also with more perspective our panel. we bring them back. brit, juan, kirsten, and steve. okay, steve, wisconsin going to president obama.

you are a wisconsinite. >> i am, indeed. well, it was always going to be a tough state, especially recently. i mean, i think there is going to be a big discussion, probably be a lot of second-guessing among wisconsinites, among republicans about how much attention was paid it to wisconsin by the romney campaign should mitt romney should the candidate have spent more time in wisconsin. he went there shortly after the june 5th recall and gave a speech. he was back on august 12th when paul ryan was picked to make that announcement and was back last week. there was grumbling in republic circles that he should have spent more time in wisconsin. treated it like the decisive state it might have been. i'm told that internal republic and romney campaign polling the reason they thought wisconsin was such a reach for them was because president obama's approval rating was fairly consistently above 50% which is a threshold for vulnerability among incumbents. a lot of discussion about

wisconsin and the way that it was handled. >> megyn: going in to tonight there was a question about whether polls were wrong and there was this groundswell of support that would come out and push mitt romney over the top in many of these states including some of these blue states, wisconsin, and pennsylvania and others. and we were scratching our heads to some extent to know what the truth was. so far what we have seen, brit, is that the polls were right. so far every -- each man has won the states that he was polling ahead in. >> brit: now draw inside straight possible but not likely that he will be able to do. this i think we can reach a couple of broader conclusions, megyn. many of us have believed and i still basically do that this is a center right country. and we -- a will the of conservatives have taken the view that this -- that liberals are really on the wane. if you look at tonight's exit polling as we have so far. those identify as liberals 29%. conservatives 35%. moderates 40%. now, this apparent outcome

tells you one thing about those moderates that there are in that category an awful lot of them who are actually liberals. now, liberal became kind of a dirty word that's when the word progressive came into use widely among them when they started referring to them as progressives. i think that -- i don't think we take the conservative number 35%. a share of those moderates who are moderate to conservative. so you have still got a center right country. but it's more liberal than many may have thought looking at those numbers. it got to be. look obama is carrying them, at least was carrying them 56 to 42, the moderates. so you know that these are based on -- a lot of these people are basically not center right people. conservatives who are going to have, if this turns out the way it appears it may, there is going to be a awful lot of recrimination and saying romney should have done this and emphasized this and so forth. the question you have to ask is would that have brought into his camp more moderates? that's the question.

>> bret: juan, the question is if romney doesn't pull this off yet. he could still run the inside straight as bill just pointed out. if there was a candidate to attract moderates wasn't mitt romney the one to do it? >> when you look back at the stage, you, meg guy and i were on that stage watching the republicans debate and contest, he was the one that i would say is the most likely to win moderate voters, to win swing voters and, of course, when we are talking about this, again, we come back to women voters. i have long said that this election would be decided by a woman voter who lived outside of orlando, florida that i 4 corridor that we are still focused on or outside of columbus, ohio or arguably outside of denver. and in all those cases we're talking about people who i think would identify themselves as swing voters. the other thing that i noticed tonight in the exit polls was that, you know, barack obama, when people are asked do you approve or disapprove of the way the president has handled his job, barack obama came in at 53%.

we hadn't seen him really at that high a level. until tonight. and that's a surprise to me. and similarly, when it comes to favorable, unfavorable here is he at a 1% favorable. so if you look -- if you are looking for signs, that say, you know, obama had a good impact on what brit hume was talking about. these folks that were kind of in the middle, this would tell you those folks when it came time to make a decision said, you know what? i'm going for four more years. >> megyn: one of the issues that mitt romney wound up moving to the right on in the primary contest was imforeign relation. and that many believed was a necessary thing for him to do to win the republic nomination. today, the conventional wisdom going in tonight was romney was going to need 35 or better percent of the latino vote. he is at 30 so far according to this wave of exit polls, 30%, so he is lower. on the question of should most illegal immigrants be working in the united states?

64 percent said yes, 29 percent said no, they shouldn't. how important is the latino vote in that issue? in what we're seeing tonight? >> well, i mean the latino vote is extremely important though if you look at these exit polls. there is no difference really between 2008 and obama basically held them and they are roughly the same percentage off maybe 1 point from 2008. but moving forward for the republic party, this is probably the last election where they even could have contested an election with this type of position that they have. because of the changing item graphics because we are becoming a more brown country and because i do think it alienates latinos. and i think what brit said is very important, and it's something that a lot of people don't understand is that there are a lot of liberal moderates in this country. and that i think that republics often overplay this idea of obama. you know, the socialist, the

marxist, the whatever. especially women as juan was talking about who tend to see the government as a good something they can rely on. it helps them. that's why they tend to vote democratic. >> do you think that's what we were seeing when we saw dem plus 7 in polls those were the liberal moderates? >> no. i think that's what i was saying earlier that was people being asked by a pollster what party do you want identify with? independent is now starting to say i identify with democrats because i'm voting for barack obama. so, you are getting people who -- it could go in either direction. in 2010 they were moving towards republicans. >> brit: well, it's plus 4 in the exit polling. plus 4 d. that's half -- almost a little more than half of what it was four years ago. so it's really drifted away to some extent for the democrats. >> i'm just talking about the polling that we have all been talking about. about people are asking why is this like d plus 7? i'm saying independents

identify. we want to make a call election alert in missouri claire mccaskill will beat republic challenger todd aiken. this is another one of those elections after akin made controversial comments about how women may have some sort of biological defense in the case of, quote, legitimate rape. she was considered very vulnerable in this seat in missouri. so much so that notwithstanding those comments. it was not to be for him. claire mccaskill has beat back that challenge and will retain her senate seat. >> bret: another call in indiana. fox news can project that mike pence will win the indiana governor's seat. first elect to congress in 2000. six term member of congress he will now be indiana's governor replacing mitch daniels who was term limited defeating democrat john gregg. there was a time when pence

decided running for president. divided to go after the indiana gubernatorial seat and he will win it tonight according to fox. >> megyn: live to greta van susteren who is in washington standing by. greta? >> greta: standing by is governor sarah palin. governor, you watch these races as they come in. your thoughts? >> oh, well, i'm disappointed in some of them, of course. still, cross my fingers, waiting to hear about ohio because we know that's paramount. the road to the white house for romney. and yet, the realization at this point is that those bain capital ads that voters just got inundated with early on in ohio and some of these other areas as it pertained to the auto bailout i think really hurt romney. >> megyn: it's curious. we don't know what's going to happen the race. very close in florida, virginia, and ohio. anything can happen. but in the event that we wake up tomorrow and the president

obama has been reelected, nothing has changed in the senate, nothing has changed in the house in terms it of balance of power. so that means that we are 18 months later. the house, the senate, and the white house stays the same, $2 billion spent in campaigning. do we expect anything to be dierent in terms of sequestration, debt, tax cuts by the end of the year? is there any difference? >> well, unfortunately, we know what we will get with four more years of obama. this really is a catastrophic set back to our economy. and to any opportunity that we would have for supreme court justices to be appointed who would be strict adherence to the traditional interpretation of what our constitution says. what we will get in four years is more debt because barack obama has been one to believe that government spending is the answer to the challenges facing america and our job creators. and i am crossing my fingers,

greta, i'm hoping things can turn around through these remaining hours of the evening. >> greta: no matter what happens, governor, even if those states, florida, ohio, and virginia and all the states go governor romney's way and he is the winner tonight, there is no clear mandate from the american people. the country we mains divided. and even if governor romney should win, he still has a divided house and a divided senate. and the whole problem is how do we get this country to move forward? how do you get someone to suddenly be able to lead and put these parties together so that people actually do sit down and solve these problems? >> you do that by following the blueprint that was crafted for us by our founders which is the path towards a more perfect union. that blueprint is the constitution. the constitution says we will will have a budget and we have gone four years under barack obama with no budget, meaning no plan, no priorities with tax dollars to be spent. so you just follow the constitution and that's the blueprint. and either one, on either side

should be able to follow that and be able to unify this nation and bring it forward. but the past is pro-log. proleg. we saw that barack obama wasn't able to do and this we don't expect he will be able to do it in the next four years. he doesn't seem to have the desire. >> greta: what is it like to be a candidate. both president obama and governor romney tonight they don't know who is going to win. you know, everyone is on pins and needles, we may be spending weeks counting ballots in this country in those three states. who knows? what is it likes a you sit there and wait and you think i could win, i could lose? >> well, you know that at this point it's not in your hands anymore. and you have asked the voters for that sacred trust, which is their vote. and you know that if you have done all that you can at that point, then there is nothing else to do. you leave it all out there on the ice. and you just do your very best. and then, you know, things unfold as they should.

>> greta: do you agree there is no mandate tonight? at least not so far? that's one of the parties that the two parties have. if there were a commanding lead by one of them there would be an idea this is the direction the american people want to go? >> perhaps, but a win is a win. you get that w in the column and that is the direction that the country has chosen. i just cannot believe though that the majority of americans would believe that incurring more debt is good for our economy, for our children's future, for job creators. i cannot believe that the majority of americans would believe that it's okay not to follow the constitution and not have a budget. and i can't believe that the majority of americans would say it's okay to rely on foreign sources of energy instead of drilling and mining our own natural resources. so, you know, it's a perplexing time for many of us right now if things continue in this trend that we have seen earlier tonight. >> greta: we don't know what's going to happen. we have seen it before where people have gone to bed early thinking the race was going to

turn out in a certain way and being very much surprised in the morning. we are still waiting on all-important states. i will toss it back to new york when they will tell us ohio, virginia and florida all do come. we are all standing by and waiting. megyn and, bret? >> megyn: greta, thank you. >> bret: thank you. four battleground states greta just mentioned too close to call right now. tracking results, virginia, florida, ohio. we have new results about ready to pop, i think. we have karl rove on the other side of this break with some interesting information. >> megyn: and reaction. stay tuned. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 let's talk about low-cost investing.

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>> bret: an election alert now from america's election headquarters. fox news will project that mitt romney will win alaska's five electoral votes. romney won the first four so now it's a clean sweep for the republic there. >> megyn: meanwhile fox is also project that president obama will win the last of maybe's electoral votes.

fox news has first three. clean sweep for the democrat there glad to get that cleared up. >> bret: alaska and maine are the only that by congressional districts. winner take all the rest of the states. 163 to 163. again, 270 electoral votes needed to win the white house. our map is starting to fill in. but right in the middle of that map is ohio. that is new mexico. >> megyn: worry just getting this information right now fox news can predict that president obama will win new mexico and five electoral votes. this is not a big surprise either. we have no surprises to report yet tonight. we're still waiting on all the big question marks that we have been debating as a country for the past several months and joining us now to weigh in on where we are with that former senior advisor to president george w. bush karl rove is still crunching the numbers right next to me.

florida, virginia, north carolina still waiting on in ohio it will come down to ohio at least to some extent. >> look, we need to remember in ohio the early vote is historically won by the democrats and election day is won by the republicans. last time the republicans lost election day in ohio was 1964. the first vote, about 35% of the vote was early in absentee votes. when that first 35% came in, romney was behind by about 10%. now we have 58.5% of the vote in so increasing amount of it is the election day vote. that margin has now fallen to 3%. and if you look at it, we're already starting to see some counties be completely. in bellwether county lake county for bush in 2004. for obama in 2008 by a 49 -- by 50, 49 margin tonight. it is 50, 48 for romney. what we have got left out is, for example, we have only a third of the vote n hamilton county. we have the city of cincinnati in but we don't have the

suburbs. >> bret: hamilton is a big republic area. >> big republic county. obama won it but he won it on the basis of the city vote four years ago. the city is in. the suburbs are not. butler county which the big suburban county in the north. 62 precincts out of 299. when they counted the early vote. it was 59% for romney. now with a few more precincts added it is 64% and climbing. delaware county, the suburban county north of columbus, when they finish counting the early vote it was 53, it's now 57. their target is to get it to 60. clinton county another exurban county part of the state only early vote has been counted. warren county goal 68%. they are now 68% with half of it including the early vote. we have a long while to go here in ohio. if you start out and 10 points behind on election day on the early vote and then, you know, you -- with 35% of the vote being basically that early vote, and you get to 58% and

you are 3% behind. there is going to be a barn burner here in ohio. >> megyn: you can hear the tone among some of our republic guests they are feeling bess mystic. are -- pessimistic. are you feeling pessimistic. >> 58.3% of the vote. romney was down 3.25%. they got to 58.5 and he is now down by 3%. >> megyn: can you say that again? all the numbers are coming at me too fast. >> 58.3% of the vote in, and romney is -- romney is down by 3 and a quarter points. when another two tenths of the vote comes, in he is now down by 3%. so, i mean, we're going to see this being chipped away throughout the evening. as i say, most of what is out are some big suburban counties and then a lot of these small reporting live counties. you -- rural counties. red with big blue blotches in it biggest cuyahoga county, cleveland. so the rest of the vote in these counties comes, in my

suspicion is we're going to continue to see them chip away at that 3% lead. >> bret: look at the map on the screen. red with the blue those different counties there. if mitt romney pulls out this win in ohio, can he still pull that inside strait to 270? >> it requires him to win virginia and florida and one other state. 3, 2, 1. >> bret: he has got to win north carolina. >> i'm assuming north carolina looks pretty good. we haven't called it nobody has called it yet. this is back to where we were in april. 3, 2, 1. "wall street journal." when the three historic republic states win the two big swing states and then win one of anything else and can you get there i wrote it now because it was a brilliant idea but because it was so obvious that's what the path for a republic to regain the white house. >> megyn: is this just math that you do as a republic to make yourself feel better or is this real and you genuinely think should be keeping an open mind. >> absolutely.

here is the deal. i don't know what it's going to end up being in butler county except it's going to be a republic victory. historic republic county. their target is 64. they are at 59 with basically the early vote counted. it's going to continue to edge up. if you are 10 points down whether you have a third of the vote in and then when you have got less than 60% of the vote in you are down 3 points. that means when you jump between 35 and 58, you knocked it down by 7 points off of your gef sit. you keep going at that pace, and you will probably get there. >> megyn: so many numbers. i'm trying to hold without the white board it's tough. >> one other thing coal county. washington county is a county in the southern part of the state bush got 58% there. mccain got 56.9. romney has won it with 61.3. you will notice that that southeastern part of ohio on the map has only one blue blotch there. the rest of it and four years ago there were more blue

blotches along the ohio river down there in coal country and the reason is that part of the world is democrat in nature but turned heavily against president obama because of coal. we're likely to see this election come down to sort of the rural western part, northwestern part of the state running exceptionally well, southwestern part of the state running exceptionally well. and then we are likely to see that coal country be the dispositive part. >> megyn: is this what you did with george w. bush in 2000 and 2004? were you behind the scenes crunching the numbers. >> yes. >> megyn: people saying you are crazy. >> no at 9:00 when i walked into the roosevelt room of the west wing and told my colleagues we were going to win you would have thought i was the man for mars. when i told president 43 he was going to get reelected. i had known him a long time you could tell he was a little dubious. >> bret: thanks, carl. reports of voting issues in ohio. eric shawn is live in cleveland tonight. hi, eric. >> hello, bret.

fox news has learned there are reports of illegal voting here in ohio. that the race is that close here. you know every vote counts. this happened in hamilton county, ohio, that is in the southern part of the state. it is, of course, cincinnati. an election official confirming to us tonight that two election judges have been removed from their posts in hamilton county for allowing this illegal voting. apparently happened as people came in to polling place reportedly as pentecostal church. they were not registered to vote. they were not on the roles. they were not registered at all but instead they were allowed to vote, allowed to sign the voting book and then were given ballots to actually st in this election today even though they were illegal voters. a bipartisan decision by the hamilton county board of elections then commenced. that decision removed those two judges. one we're told is a democrat. the other a republic. they had been replaced earlier today by two other judges. in order to register to vote in this state, you have had to

have registered by october 9th. so clearly this would indicate some illegal activity. we do not know how many illegal votes may have been cast in hamilton county tonight, whether this is a handful or several or more than that. but, certainly it is something that election officials in cincinnati are investigating. and if this race gets as close as they say it is here and this gets down to provisional ballots, that could be about 200,000 provisional ballots, that won't even be counted until november 17th. so it could be a long night here and maybe even longer. back to you. >> bret: eric, thank you very much. >> megyn: up next, peggy noonan and bill kristol as florida, ohio, north carolina and virginia all are still too close to call. stay with us, folks.

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i'm gonna stand up to her! no you're not. i know. you know ronny folks who save hundreds of dollars switching to geico sure are happy. how happy are they jimmy? happier than a witch in a broom factory. get happy. get geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more. >> bret: welcome back to america's election headquarters, we are watching battleground states and they are too close to call. right now at this hour president barack obama has a slight lead in florida. and there you see it, it is very tight there. 87% of the expected vote in. and the margin is very slim. cannot call that one. in ohio, you just heard karl rove talking about the different areas of ohio. there you see it. 60% of the expected vote n ohio. a lot of it focusing on cincinnati. so it appears ohio possibly

the nation's fate will come down to a city once run by jerry springer. [ laughter ] >> megyn: and from had which our own bill hemmer hails. we will get to that in a minute. take to you virginia. we are still waiting on results there. we are not able to project a winner in the state of virginia. you can see with 69% of the expected vote counted, mitt romney now has 51% and barack obama 48. i want to take you to north carolina, another critical state, and with 94% of the expected vote counted, mitt romney does have a lead there as well. you can see by two points over barack obama. >> bret: as we look outside, times square here in new york city, this is a cool shot, isn't it. >> very. >> bret: that's the electoral vote up there. it's still tied at this hour as our map continues to fill in 163 to 163 and the magic number say it together 270 to win the white house. >> megyn: kind of left you hanging there.

[ laughter ] sorry, next time. >> bret: crickets chirping. >> megyn: i have your back next time. >> bret: let's bring in peggy noonan your thoughts on the evening? >> it's quite a night. i'm hearing the pessimism of people, a certain of the guests i quite understand it. but a lot remains to be seen about this night. it's a funny sort of thing. it looks like it will go on for a while. i'm not at all sure we are going to know what's going on in ohio for a while. but there is a -- oh a subdued feeling to this if you are a conservative or a republic this evening. second thought is, i'm thinking my goodness, we just spent $2 billion, we're preoccupied profoundly for 18 months. there was no other story in america but the political story, and we may wind up with a certain stays with roughly

the same congress and roughly the same president so that's quite something. >> bret: it is. are you surprised at the strength, peggy, of president obama especially in some of these swing states like virginia, in north carolina which we haven't called yet, in florida. >> north carolina is the one that really caught my eye. florida, also. yes, i am surprised. it's going to take some real thinking -- well, i will just tell you for me it's going to take some real thinking about what happened here if, indeed, what appears to be happening turns out to be so. >> megyn: peggy, what do you make of the social issues and the appeal to women that we saw from the democratic party in this campaign. the president leading by a healthy margin among women as he was first alert forecast to do but there was a question about whether the democrats had the right message on this war on women and promoting reproductive rights and birth control and so on and so forth. your thoughts on how that seems to be panning out. >> to me, it seemed the wrong way for the democrats to be

going. deeply disingenuous and also off point and rustling passions. people have to be worried about: no more when we dive a little bit deeper into the longer exit polling data. what may strike me he however, megyn right from the top is that this very toughly negative obama campaign assumption. win drive a stake through the heart of mitt romney really ruin his, the sense of american people have of him being a professional being. paint him as bain capital and repacious capitalist and all this stuff. we have talked about this in the past few months. i have a feeling it was even more powerful than some of us who thought it was powerful.

>> bret: peggy, former speech writer, you saw the closing arguments and you saw both candidates making their pitch in the final days. what were your thoughts about that? >> i thought romney's closing argument was pretty good. it came together for him, i thought at the end in a way that it hadn't. he also caught his own stride as a candidate and as a man campaigning before people who were genuinely excited for the first time to see him come and speak. i remember in one of the last rallies i heard. i was watching it on tv i heard the crowd break out at one point and the words mitt, mitt, mitt, my goodness i hadn't heard that in the past year. i thought that was pretty significant. while i thought the president was more down beat and more grim, but i must tell you, bret, i suspect at the end of the day as we look back on all of this history we won't think the closing arguments had much

to do with it. this cake may have been baked a little while ago. >> bret: peggy noonan as always, thank you. >> thank you. >> megyn: joining us now robert gibbs senior advisor for obama for america. robert, your thoughts on where we are tonight. >> well, look, i think where we are tonight is where i'm looking at it is we are in pretty good shape. all our paths to 270 are still very much intact. romney campaign is surprised of the nine battleground states. they haven't added one of those to their column tonight. so, look, i feel very good about where we are. >> megyn: i want to ask you about the way it's shaking out right now in congress because the republicans are going to retain control of the house. it appears that the democrats are going going to retain control of the senate. if barack obama gets reelected tonight. it's going to go back to a congress that looks an awful lot like the one that there has been such contention with over the past four years. how would things change?

>> megyn, they will change because we have issues that we have gridlock haven't dealt with in order and getting us on a same -- sane business call path -- fiscal path we know is looming over us. unless we sit down and have compromise and give among republicans who have been quite frankly. [cutting out audio] meet the president halfway, if we can start it do some of that, we can see that we'll make some real progress, a balanced way of getting our fiscal house in order and controlling our debts and our deficits. >> megyn: apologize to our viewers because we're getting a few hits in the satellite feeds but we want to hear from you, robert. bear with us if you can. what if the republicans don't compromise? what if they come back and say we have a mandate not to compromise. we didn't compromise that much over the last couple of years and we felt like our voters told us continue that what does barack obama do then?

>> well, i think if you look at the approval rating of republicans in congress nationally, i think it's lower than the national drinking age. when your approval rating is the lower than the national drinking age you are not doing well. if republicans take from approval rating that's that low that what they are doing is the right way to lead the country, then i think they haven't probably spent enough time looking -- out of what this campaign is quite frankly talking to people where they live. they don't live on the extremes in this. they live somewhere in the middle and they want to get something done in a positive way for this country. >> bret: robert, bret baier. you say you want things to get done. you are saying for a long time democrats on the hill were saying if the president won it was about breaking the backs of the republic party to kind of break them to follow his agenda. >> no. >> bret: that's not what you are saying? >> no, no, no. look, i don't -- no one is going to get everything they

want in -- each side. [breaking audio] >> what you have to have in order to have people get along is they have to be willing to sit at the table and listen. i think after tonight i think the president is going to get reelected. i think we are going to flip some senate seats and be in a stronger position to convince republicans that it's time to sit down and begin talking about these issues. not just issuing press releases and saying that, you know, they are not interested in getting something done on behalf of the american people. >> bret: robert gibbs, thanks for your time. we still could have a long night ahead though. we appreciate it? >> yes, sir. >> megyn: at first those hits making anticipatory. then kind of annoying. >> bret: because of the technology not because of robert. >> megyn: not because of robert. but because of the satellite dish. we want to bring this to you. fox news decision desk has now classified colorado as too close to call. we are watching the denver

suburbs very closely to see whether president obama will be able to match his strong showing there back in 2008. this, given the way the electoral map has unfolded tonight is even more important than it was at the beginning of the night. the state of colorado. but at this hour, it's too close to call. fox news hopes to project a winner as soon as possible. they don't usually put that language out there, bret, the decision desk. because that sounds hopeful to me that they actually think they might get there. >> bret: they could. we can project a winner in arizona. mitt romney will win the state of arizona handily, even though, again, just explaining 49% of the expected vote in but fox news decision desk is calling the state of arizona. you know, arizona at the beginning of this election battle was actually considered by democrats as a possible swing state for them. they thought they were going to put it on their map. but, it quickly fell away. arizona dealing with a lot of housing issues, heavy republic state. we're calling that for mitt romney. >> megyn: yeah.

coming up, we are going to check in with the campaigns. carl cameron and ed henry and we are going to go to break taking a look live in boston at romney campaign headquarters. i think, where are they? there they are. [ male announcer ] at scottrade, you won't just find us online, you'll also find us in person, with dedicated support teams at over 500 branches nationwide. so when you call or visit, you can ask for a name you know. because personal service starts with a real person. [ rodger ] at scottrade, seven dollar trades are just the start. our support teams are nearby, ready to help. it's no wonder so many investors are saying... [ all ] i'm with scottrade.

>> megyn: welcome back, folks, 10:45 in the east. we are taking a look at several of the key battleground states, cliewrgd florida which is still too close to call with 89% of the expected vote counted. you can see the president has a very slight lead in the state of florida. but, we are told that the panhandle, in particular, comes in late and that can tend to lean to the right. so we're waiting to see. also, take a look at ohio. the critical swing state of ohio. 64% of the expected vote counted and there we are showing the president with a slight lead over mitt romney and in north carolina still too close to call. critical to mitt romney's re-election chances and you can see with 96% of the vote counted, mitt romney does maintain a lead over president obama. just three of the states we are waiting on right now. bret? >> bret: okay, virginia, i'm over at the billboard. we are looking at the state of virginia. a little inside secret here. we are also doing the broadcast network so sometimes bill goes over to shepard smith on the broadcast side.

so when he is away occasionally i might pop up on the board here. okay, the state of virginia, we're waiting on the state of virginia. right now it is very tight. right here 76% of the expected vote in and you can see the difference there. 50 to 49. you remember early in the evening. i talked about three counties. prince william, louden and fairfax county. that's right up here. you can see in fairfax county the president has 58% and 41% for mitt romney. you might say well, that's great, he is doing well in those suburbs. however, if you look back to 2008, president obama did better, 61% over john mccain 39%. in fairfax county in 2012, this number needs to be higher for president obama to win the state of virginia. at least that's what most analysts will tell you. so the state of virginia overall is still too close to call as you just mentioned, florida, north carolina,

virginia, ohio, we're starting to fill in the map, megyn. but it's taking some time. >> megyn: all right, bret. well, i got a little jealous that they got up and let you walk around the studio so i'm going to do the same. >> bret: good. i will help you. >> megyn: what you nice gentleman you are. your wife amy is lucky gal. i will will go back and talk to the three wise men. >> three wise guys. >> megyn: i wasn't going to go there. what are you guys doing? >> we're playing -- >> megyn: i'm anchoring the segment. i want to start with them i and i will get now a minute. >> chris: i have information. >> megyn: forget what i said and go to chris wallace. >> chris: i have been in touch with people in the romney campaign and i said it's looking like a tight path. i said where does it stand? i'm going to read you email as he said to me. tight, very tight. ohio is closing. we'll be within 1 point. florida will be less than

10,000 votes either way. virginia will be a point or two. too early to tell about colorado but our path is getting narrow. they know now it's down to the 3, 2, 1. they have to win the three southeastern states and win ohio. basically it looks like they have got to win colorado and it looks like it's going to be absolutely as i say within a point in ohio. 10,000 votes in florida. and a point or two in virginia. and colorado they don't know yet. >> megyn: 10,000 votes in florida would mean automatic recount, though? >> in support of that, it looks like just roughly, there are 315,000 votes out in counties that president obama is carrying and there are about 350,000 votes out in counties that mitt romney is carrying. and right now obama a lead of about 35,000 votes, which is exactly the difference between 350 and 315. >> megyn: unbelievable. joe, your thoughts so far? >> looking at florida, i said earlier in the night i thought florida could end up being that dead heat thing that we don't want to -- reminding us

of 2000. i think it's going to be that way. it's going to be very, very close there. >> megyn: but will it be? we don't know what's happening in colorado yet. >> in florida it's going to be that way. as we go up to virginia and into ohio, they are all looking that way. >> series of dominoes all of which are going to be narrow, narrow, narrow. >> megyn: if any one falls it's bad for romney if all go his way he can win the presidency. >> chris: fatal for romney if any one of them falls. there is a path there. narrow path and it's still there competitive in all those states. >> obama folks i talk to they still are insisting that they have a shot, they believe they are going to win florida. again, when you have two sides who believe it's within 10,000 votes. >> megyn: right. >> you know, who knows. but they -- it is fatal, but if the dominoes fall they could fall all the way to colorado. i mean. >> that was the one they

needed from the start. they could get at the bare minimum. >> megyn: we could wind up sending hemmer back to florida counting hanging chad's. >> 37. first one in and last one out. >> megyn: i have to do this because it's bothering -- there we go. now we are ready now we are ready thanks, guys. they were three wise guys. i can go over here too. i don't know -- i can do the billboard. i don't want to touch it. i feel uncomfortable. what should i hit? let's say virginia? what's happening here? [ laughter ] >> yeah, that was exciting. the power. >> bill: what's fascinating right now is this state right here. look at florida, megyn. you have 90% of the vote in. it's a 1 point edge between barack obama and mitt romney. i mean, do the math right here. that's about 20, 25,000 votes between the two of them. >> megyn: stand by because i'm told we have a race call. let's get back to bret.

>> bret: fox news can now project that president obama will win the state of minnesota and its 10 electoral votes. the north star state has always leaned toward obama but romney held out hope in the closing weeks of that campaign possibly poaching the democratic strong hold although that was a long shot according to many analysts there you see the checkmark even though 23% of the vote is, in fox news decision desk can give the state of minnesota and its 10 electoral votes to president obama. with that, you have the electoral math adding up. right now, mitt romney 174, president obama 173. our map is filling in. there is still a lot of white there. florida, north carolina, virginia, ohio, and the national popular vote, the difference as it stands right now. a little bit more than 1.5 million votes. america's election headquarters continues after this. [ woman ] i don't know. i just can't imagine

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introducing the new droid razr maxx hd by motorola. now more than ever droid does. >> bret: welcome back to america's election headquarters. we are watching those states too close to call. florida top of the list. it is very very tight. you just heard it could be within 10,000 votes at the end. ohio, still very tight there as some of the raw total is coming in. 66% of the expected vote is in. florida and ohio, of the 10 largest states only florida and ohio gave winning presidential candidates margins of less than 5% in

2000, 2004, and 2008 elections. >> megyn: that is just incredible. down to the state of virginia we go and that, too, is still too close to call. take a look at the numbers. 76% of the expected vote count in and we are showing a slight lead for governor romney at this hour. in north carolina, a similar situation although more of the expected vote is counted. 97% is in and you can see mitt romney now has a 3 point lead over the barack obama there. >> bret: was we take a look at the electoral map again map is filling in. mitt romney 174, president obama 173 and big race is to 270. >> megyn: susan estrich big campaign manager for michael do you cass dukakis presidential manager. >> it's going how we thought. if i had to take a pick whose chair i wanted to be in right now. it looks better for president

obama. you all have been talking about it mitt romney has a tight reap to walk right now. if any one of these states falls, there is no way he gets to 270. it's a fun election but nothing has really surprised me yet. >> megyn: you, you know, having managed the michael dukakis campaign are familiar with the losing feeling. your thoughts. >> i am. >> megyn: your thoughts on what's going on at the headquarters of each campaign? >> well, you know, downstairs you have all these people milling around and there is a big divide on election night between down stairs and upstairs. down stairs you have got people milling around, having a drink, every once in a while somebody from the campaign will come down so they can talk to your reporter. they will get calls in. upstairs is where the fun is and upstairs you have got a candidate sitting there who is trying to be calm, who is with his family. who is just going to watch this for the first time in years there is nothing you can do.

and he has got people wildly working the phones. i have been on both ends of this. and you know you are sitting there. i have been sitting in dade county, florida and they are calling you and say how is it looking? you have no idea how it is really looking but you come up with some numbers. and that's what's going on. and then you have the people in your studio calling the people in the room upstairs saying what's going on? and they are saying, i guess from romney, it could be very tight, which means, you know, get me another drink. it's very tough up there. >> megyn: what did you make of robert gibbs' answer? i don't know if you heard his interview here when we talked about how, right now, we are certainly looking at divided government because it looks like the going to it stay in the control of the democrats and house is dinitely staying in control of the republicans. republicans who had been so demonized by their opponents, you know, i mean, they weren't thrown out of office, robert gibbs is saying they are going to change because their approval rating is low. but if they retain their job and didn't get thrown out by

constituents. why are they going to change? >> well, look, this will be the challenge to the president tonight, megyn, if he is reelected. as you have said all along, if he is reelected and i think he will be reelected it's going to be a tight election particularly in the popular vote. we are going to have divided government. the challenge to the president is can he do jujitsu here? and instead of saying in effect i have no mandate, say i have a mandate to heal this divided nation. we are a house divided. when there is a big storm or a foreign policy crisis, we come together and then our political leadership at least until this point takes us right down the middle again. and i think there is a majority in this country for actually governing and doing something and not just when there is a hurricane. so the challenge for the president is going to be can he form a different kind of governing majority. if he is reelected, it's his last campaign. can he put something together in the center? and frankly the challenge for republicans if they lose

tonight the presidency is going to be to take a hard look at themselves and say what went wrong? >> megyn: susan estrich, thanks so much. >> thank you. >> megyn: can you see right there we are 9 seconds away from the next poll closings and we do have several states and updates now to call. stand by as the results come in. >> bret: fox news can now project that mitt romney will win north carolina and its 15 electoral votes. that is a big win. we have been waiting for it all night long. analysts at the beginning of this race believed that north carolina was going to go into mitt romney's category and column early in this race. you will remember the democrats held their convention there. this waited until pretty much late in the evening but mitt romney will win the state of north carolina. and those electoral votes. >> megyn: i want to bring you update from the state of idaho with fox news is projecting governor romney will win that state. that's a new call as well as

now we have got an update for you in the state of washington. that state fox news is projecting president obama will win the state of washington along with the state of hawaii. so, again, still, we don't have any surprise calls but we are filling in some blanks and offering some check marks. >> bret: california the biggest and most populist prize of the night which carries with it a whopping 55 electoral votes will, no surprise, go to president barack obama. so, with that, filling in our map, there you see the electoral votes 244 for president obama, 193 for mitt romney. 270 now needed, needed for the white house. you will see florida there hanging out there on the corner. and virginia, ohio, and still waiting on iowa, colorado, and the states out west as well. too close to call. >> megyn: you can see why they would like to win california. that really ups your election

count. >> bret: 55. >> california, texas electoral rich states and so is florida. we have no update for florida. not able to call that, not able to call virginia and call ohio. that will tell the story. >> bret: we have another call in the senate. fox projects that the democrat tim kaine, former governor will win the senate seat in virginia. he is eager to hang on to it that seat the democrats were from retiring senator jim webb. republic george allen had a very very robust effort to go after this senate seat he lost, going after the senate the last time. and republicans thought they could pull off a win. what this means for mitt romney in virginia. right now he holds a very slim lead in virginia but tim kaine will win the senate seat there and democrats will hold the u.s. senate. >> megyn: those virginia governors they like to serve. they leave office and then they want to go back and via

the senate and they love it i want to go back to the panel and ask them about their reaction. brit, let me ask you about that discussion had with robert gibbs. he says in a second term, these house republicans, they are going to be different like it's going -- we're going to see different results second time around if we have a president obama again and house republicans and senate dems because their approval rating are so low they have to change. >> brit: well, your point you just made earlier seems to me is the right point which is that they got reelected. if you look at the big issue, what's the most divisive big issue? it's the budget tear -- budgetary issue. that's the one we will interest to deal with early and often. tonight we had that an exit poll question do you think we should raise taxes to help close the deficit. that may not be the exact quote but what the essence was it came out 66 to 33 no. so your newly elected or newly reelected republic congressman and, you know, particularly

cutting tax increases to begin with and you are elected by electorate that says that or elected when the national electorate says that are you going to feel under some compulsion to go along with the president's desire to raise taxes on everybody? if the question were framed raise the taxes on the rich? you get a different result. you get the picture. the republicans are not going to yield easily on that. there has got to come a time somewhere along the way here when we have some major retrenchments in spending on the entitlement programs because they are the big drivers of the debt and the deficits. when that day comes, there may come a time when republicans might say okay, if once these cuts go into effect or once we are sure they are real, we will agree to some -- to tax incrosses but i don't think you will see that early. no way. >> bret: kirsten, as bret puts it, mitt romney could still run the inside strait tonight and we have a long way to go still according to our decision desk. but if president obama does win, what is it in his past

four years that shows democrats that he is going to be willing to negotiate with republics or moderate somehow with capital hill? what is it over the past four years that is the tract record that that actually will happen in the second four years? >> i don't think he is being reelected in terms of democrats. i don't know that democrats necessarily want him to be. >> bret: i know that's what his people are talking about. >> i don't know if that's what democrats want from him. if anything he is probably more likely to work with republicans now that is he a lame duck he is not running for re-election again. he had to keep his base happy or he would not be reelected. i mean, he had to have the same coalition of people come out for him again and he would have been unhappy if he was giving in on things if he didn't moderate 2010 when he took that big loss and said he was handed huge loss by republicans. if after that ahead of this presidential election we didn't see this move to the

center from president obama. what's to indicate that the second four years if he would win tonight that he would do that. i don't know this is a much longer definition. >> bret: you have 30 seconds. [ laughter ] >> i think, you know, i don't think he wanted to -- you know, he he couldn't triangulate and keep his base is my point. i think that he needed to do the things that he did. and if ever there was going to be a time to come together, it would be now. if republics are interested in doing it i would argue that they are not interested and they weren't interested before and i think what americans voted for tonight is more gridlock. >> but, look, i have got a simpler, shorter answer to that there is no indication that he would come to the center. there is none whatsoever. as you suggest, he didn't do it before 2010. and then after 2010. unlike bill clinton in 1994 who went on and then came to the middle obviously rather famously. this president chose not to do that and went more ideological

in this campaign. >> megyn: stand by because we are going to make a call now in the state of missouri. fox news can now project that mitt romney will win missouri. its 10 electoral votes. and so we will put the map back up on the board in a moment so you can see the electoral totals but that, yeah, there you have it. mitt romney with 203. president obama with 244. magic number 270 as fox news calls the state of missouri for mitt romney. i want to get back to you on that point. the gridlock in washington seems like it has to stop. we're about to go over the fiscal cliff. it's going to happen. president obama said that in that one debate it's not going to happen which came as news because it is going to happen unless there is some law change in washington. i mean, unless they get together and change. >> we have a real fundamental disagreement here. i think the gridlock comes from the republicans. >> megyn: that's fine. let's assume it does. if they are not motivated and

president obama is not motivated what changes? >> motivated if you look at the senate races that they have lost in the last couple of cycles and these tea party candidates and the kind of havoc that they are reeking in the republic party. i mean, the two senate seats claire mccaskill was the most vulnerable senator and she lost because of this tea party candidate. i mean, i think the republicans have to stop and take a look at their party because it's not that president obama is not moderate. it's that the republic party is so far out. >> bret: he didn't do it after 2010. that's my point. he is the president of the united states. >> but they are not moderate. there is no moving to the middle with them. they are all the way over here. >> there is no moving to the middle with the president. he is the president of the united states. he didn't do any of that he didn't pretend to do any of that. >> raising taxes on rich people is not a radical position. that is a fairly moderate position that is supported by a majority of the americans and republicans will not meet the president in the middle. i really do think that the problem isn't.

>> brit: the problem with that argument is the issue we are trying to adjust is this budget deficit and even in this massive national debt which is the -- you know the accumulative effect of all these deficits, raising taxes on rich people doesn't get you anywhere near the kind of money you need to begin to address the problem. are you going to ask republicans to abandon something they believe in which is raising taxes on the rich hurts the economy whose strength you are going it need if you are ever going to close the budget deficit in order to do something that doesn't raise very much money. >> let me make two quick points. >> bret: make them quick. >> juan: in the numbers we saw tonight the voters say 48% to 47% they prefer romney over obama. very slight. 48%, 47%. no big difference there. this answers your question, megyn, legacy. the second term, he has got a legacy to build. and he he has got to build on the idea that he is taking care of big problems in america. big problems? fiscal cliff. big problem, getting the economy going.

so he does have added incentive now as opposed to 2010 to get something done. i think you will see it. >> bret: or for the betterment of the country. >> that's what i'm saying. in order to say i'm helping mechanic. i'm your president and i want a legacy beyond the healthcare law, he he would have to make a deal. >> bret: okay, panel, stand by. another race call for you. in nebraska fox news can now project that republic deb fisher will win the senate seat there being vacated by democratic senator ben nelson thereby by ending bob kerry's quest to return to the senate. the republicans have picked up a democratic seat there. kerrey ran in 1992. also a one-term nebraska governor. two terms as senator. he was trying to pull off upset here. democrats had high hopes but deb fischer the republic will win that democratic seat. >> megyn: ben nelson who went completely after the radar after the healthcare law was passed and he was part of the cornhusker kick back and so

heavily criticized and he had been all over the media prior to that he we really never saw him again and decided to retire. >> bret: that's exactly right. >> megyn: a republic seat. >> bret: enough about what could happen down on capitol hill. let's talk about what's happening right now. the votes that are coming in, the fact that florida is possibly as close as it is, brit, within 10,000 votes. what are you seeing? what are you hearing? >> bret: i'm the same place where the rest of you are. we are looking at a situation where only a couple of battleground states out there. we basically know how the rest of the country has gone. the president enjoys a lead. he doesn't have to win much much more to be reelected. mitt romney is going to have to win these other places. he have to win ohio, he have to win, virginia. he has to win florida. he needs them all. it could happen. it's not at all impossible. but, you know, we have looked at a night when we thought we would be looking at a night, perhaps where michigan and

pennsylvania and some of these other places would be in play. they turned out not to be. and i come back, once again, to this point. and i think we need to have a kind of discussion about this. because we are going to understand more at the end of this night than we did going in about who -- what the american electorate is. it's clearly not on the verge of delivering some huge mandate for the reelected president if he is reelected. it's very close. popular vote is practically that ties a juan was just pointing out. that tells us something. we also learned something about moderates and liberals tonight. it's interesting, megyn that i sit here on the air -- said here on the air a little while ago it turns out people who self-identify as moderates are liberals and can you tell how they voted. some people thought i meant independents. that's a whole different picture. romney is winning independents not by a huge margin but by some margin which tells you that, you know, republicans and a larger majority of

independents could be a winning coalition tonight. so, you know, that's -- it's -- that's how that breaks out to different category all together. conservatives and moderates are different. >> megyn: is there any mandate for president obama to governor if he comes in with a country so fractured and divided right now and the house republicans, you know, still in control on that branch? >> juan: i think first of all, yes, the country is polarized. but, again, it's curious to look at the numbers and to look at the moderates that brit was just describing. because, if you look at something like, for example, foreign policy, i'm sorry, then i need to wrap. >> megyn: sorry. [ laughter ] >> brit: sorry, juan. >> bret: this is a fox news election alert. fox news can now project that president obama will win the crucial battleground state of ohio. long considered to be the nation with 18 electoral votes. ohio, this was the entire

ballgame. now, major set back obviously for governor romney whose path to 270 electoral votes needed just got considerably narrow and now we can say that barack obama will win ohio. that is a huge, huge win for barack obama. >> megyn: that's the one we have all been waiting for. there is question now about, you know, what does that mean, panel? does that mean? >> brit: that's it. >> bret: essentially barack obama is reelected. >> brit: some unbelievable miracle would have to occur. i don't see how -- this isn't going to happen. the president has won re-election. the point should be made here. look, i believe that -- we all know the incumbency is an advantage. i believe it was equally a burden in this election. his team engineered a campaign that basically overcame that overcame the fact that the economy had not recovered in the kind of way that it needed

to. unemployment rate was still high. that his signature achievement obama care was unpopular. these were real burdens. they managed to put together a campaign that overcame that narrow, it's close and so forth. but they did it. and it is -- i think it is a major political achievement because it wasn't easy. >> megyn: want to check in-where are we going? crist wallace. >> bret: ed henry is live at obama campaign headquarters in chicago. ohio, a big win, you can hear them cheering behind you, ed, what's the -- give us the fall-out there. >> they are almost reaching pandemonium now, brit, because they feel it they know the president has now crossed this threshold. despite the fact that unemployment is still hovering near 8%. this president is going to be reelected. they know that behind me. this place has been filling over the last hour or so with with more and more people. we're told at this hour the president is getting this information across town at the fairmont hotel here in chicago. he is not here at mccormick place just yet.

he is there with staff. he is there with family. he is greeting them. is he thanking them for what they have done so far. in case there is any doubt about any of the other remaining states out there. i just spoke to a senior obama advisor who says that their pollsters are telling them that in florida what's left out there looks pretty good for the president. some counties where they think they will do well. don't know that for a fact yet. it still has to come in. they are still feeling good that they might be able to get florida. obviously the popular vote is still out there as to whether or not, you know, the president can claim a full mandate or not. >> bret: ed, are they -- were they expecting this wait on florida and this ohio call? are you getting immediate reaction? there are still a lot of people out there who haven't called ohio but our decision desk is saying that they are -- they ever confident that we are projecting ohio for president obama. >> i can tell you over two hours ago one of president's senior most advisors emailed

me and said it's over. he said that's off the record right now. i don't want you to go with it but what we are seeing in our projections it's over. obviously i wasn't going to come out and say that because we had a lot of states that still hadn't been called. but inside the obama war room for at least a couple of hours they have been privately seeking, feeling and saying that this is over. once we cal ohio here. it's not a huge shock to them inside the war room. and i'm told they have been telling the president all of this information obviously over the last couple of hours as he had a family dinner, et cetera. he has known that he is going to win re-election. >> megyn: it was a hard-fought battle for the state of ohio. and now as we have told you, fox news has projected that president obama has won it and fox news is projecting that barack obama has been reelected as president of the united states. mitt romney's path to the presidency has now been foreclosed with the loss of ohio. >> bret: because now we can project that barack obama will win iowa and oregon.

the state of iowa will go to president obama. and the state of oregon will go to president obama. now with the state of ohio, we can now definitively say that president barack obama will be reelected. mitt romney will come up a loser in this race. republics thought that they had an amazing shot to take down a president who had high unemployment rates, who had a nation that was split over his healthcare law. they thought that this was the time. this is not the time. democrats fought back. the obama campaign running a very aggressive early effort to characterize mitt romney as a corporate raider and his time at bain capital early in his business career and portraying that negatively as you look live at obama headquarters and the cheering there. that worked in a state like ohio. also the auto bailout was

hammered by democrats in ohio and other states. president barack obama will win because his campaign did a good job of campaigning. he will not win because of the state of the economy but republics will look back starting tomorrow and look back at what happened. megging they that is what we were told early on in the game which was the mission on the president's team would be to, quote: kill mitt romney and to attack his character and to make people believe that he didn't care about them. that he was a corporate raider, that he was a vulture, a vampire, culture capitalist. already we are getting word within some circles that they are going to question whether mitt romney fought back hard enough against that charge. whether he let some of that $100 million worth of negative advertising mount against him unanswered for too long in this campaign. and in a way that wound up defining him as to what the obama team wanted him defined

as as to somebody who has devoted a large portion of his life helping others through his faith, through his church, through his other dealings. i want to get to the panel now for their thoughts. brit? >> bret: something should be said about the polls. lot of us were troubled by state polls that showed pluralities of democrats voting that we thought approached those of 2008 and we didn't think it was possible. it was plus 7 democrat in 2008. we didn't think it was likely that obama would do that well. obviously overall the race is closer than it was, much closer than it was. but this is the last sweep of the exit polls that we have in hand. 25,000 person sample. those who identified as democrats 38, republicans 32. that is plus 6 democrats. that is better than we thought many of us thought he would do. and that tells the story. >> megyn: wow, that does. because we have been talking about so long do you believe these polls? and so many pollsters said it's not going to be the same

as it was in 2008 and the enthusiasm has waned and electorate has changed. how many times you have heard a president elect say you see all the polls were wrong. >> juan: not tonight. >> megyn: that's the point. >> juan: not only that the polls were right but we were talking about this earlier. the methodology based on asking the moderates that brit was discussing how do you identify with republic or democrat? turns out the plus 6 for democrats was exactly on target. i will say this in addition when you look at moderates, the people made the call tonight for president obama. a lot of these issues, the economy, brit says it's not because of the economy that the president got reelected, in fact, when you ask people, you know, do you consider the economy good because they voted for president obama. even if you ask them, do you ask not so good?

59, 42. ask about unemployment. they also thought that barack obama, better to it handle unemployment. quite a surprise. given how much negative news comes about the economy. americans begin to see the economy beginning to recover. we have here also i think still an after birth of the bush years. americans still blaming george w. bush 50% for what's going on here with the economy. in this country. >> bret: steve, your thoughts. >> likely to see this big discussion inside the republic party. basically two camps. one camp that says mitt romney ran way too far to the right. he tried to be something he wasn't. and in that sense he did himself in. that's like what we hear from the mainstream media and others. there is another group. i think it's the stronger group that says republicans don't do as well this they nominate someone who is

moderate. 2012. mitt romney. somebody who pushed clearer and harder contrast could have been a better candidate against in president. if you look inside these numbers. if you want to just look at one question in particular in the exit polls that gets to core government philosophy. should the government do more to solve problems. 43%. better left at business and individuals. 51%. so still a majority of americans believe that the government is doing too much. too many things left to individuals obviously a very good night for democrats. if you look again at liberal moderate. 25% self-identified moderates. 3 a% self-identified conservatives. >> megyn: how does barack obama start a new term now, kirsten, given that he won? he won narrowly but the very house republicans that he has been attacking in a lot of his

stump speech also received their mandate tonight. he has got a mandate. they have theirs. how does he come back. and change course and preserve a legacy: just to get the country going again. even though he has made some strides in the economic department. -- >> if i work for him i would say go sit down with bill clinton and talk about how bill -- talk about how to work with people who you don't agree on. find the areas try to get something done. can i give my take on the election? >> megyn: yeah. >> i think that the idea that well, of all, i just want to say the reason i was so sure that barack obama was going to win because i, who someone who used to work on campaigns, i believe very strongly the best campaign wins. i just got wrapped so i have to finish that thought. >> megyn: that's --

>> bret: can you finish the thought. >> can i finish that? i think the best campaign wins and i think obama campaign, what was the number that i said that they said it was going to be for the white vote? 72 is the number. they know where their voters were. they found them. they started doing this the day after he was elected and they ran an excellent campaign. they knew their voters knew how to reach them. >> bret: let's go to "fox news sunday" host chris wallace. chris? >> well, i have great respect for our decision desk and i see that they are very happy in chicago. but i have got to tell you the romney camp has real doubts about the call that's been made by us and other networks about ohio. they do not believe ohio is in the obama camp. i just got email from a top romney person. i said do you agree with our call? they said not really it is less than 20,000 votes now with 20% of the vote still out in g.o.p. areas. carl has just on the phone with somebody else. you got some more recent figures. >> here it is. the secretary of the networks,

our network called on the basis of 74% of the vote being in. the secretary of state web site has 77.49% of the vote, in and it shows 2,229,686 votes for president obama with 49.19% of the vote and for governor romney 2,228,695, a 911 vote difference, 49.17. >> chris: you are saying 900 votes? >> when it was at 74% it was 20 some odd thousand votes now with 77% of the vote in it is 991. one of the reasons why it's one of the biggest blocks of votes out on the state are the republic suburbs think narrowed that margin dramatically. the speaker pro tem of the house. his district had 3% of the vote in until very recent. >> chris: i'm going to ask you a straight out question. you went through this in 2000. you almost went through it in

2004. do you believe that ohio has been settled? >> no, i don't. and, look, if we are calling this on the basis of 74% of the vote being in and when 77% is in, secretary of state said i got the director of the ohio campaign for romney on the other end of the line refreshing the page every few seconds: 1995 vote margin for president obama. to just now hang on. democrat. half of hamilton county out. we had the city of cincinnati vote. we now saw -- you know, we are starting to see the suburbs start come in. we have big swatches of butler county. delaware county. warren county all of which republic counties that have big chunks of their vote out. >> chris: you are not saying obama isn't going to win but hasn't won it yet. >> premature. we have quarter of the vote.

here remember, here is the thing about ohio. third of the vote cast early won overwhelmingly by the democrats. counted first and then you count the election day and the question is. by the time you finish counting the election day overcome early advantage that democrats have built up in early voting. particularly in cuyahoga county. >> chris: joe, we know carl has a rooting interest. at this point he is telling us the facts. but you don't have a rooting interest for mitt romney, what do you think? >> look, they thought florida was their best shot that virginia looked the shakiest and that ohio, they were -- they thought they were going to win but less sure of. and so, you know he, but when you look at these counties, you look at hamilton county. obama has been winning it. there is still a lot out there. i understand what if you look at some of these counties. there are a lot of votes left

for obama that could outnumber some of these suburban counties. >> chris: could, not has. >> if the decision desk is looking at those and precincts in those counties and projecting that's what they do. we haven't been able to go in and do that yet. >> chris: carl? >> apparently the web site is now being crashed because they can no longer refresh it i don't know what the outcome is going to be. but you should -- we have got to be careful about calling things when we have like 991 votes separating the two candidates and a quarter of the vote yet to count. >> even if they have made it on the basis of select precincts i would be very careful about intruding in this process. >> chris: well, folks. [ laughter ] >> bret: thanks. >> chris: so maybe not so fast. >> bret: thank you. it's great to have you guys here. >> megyn: that's awkward. >> bret: okay. so here is what we are going to do. we are going to get someone from the decision desk and

we're going to bring them in here and they are going to have them on air and going to interview them about this decision. >> i think we should sit them next to carl rove and let them interview each other. >> bret: michael barone and chris. we will see who is going to come and talk to us. but, in the meantime, let's talk to carl cammeron who is in boston with the romney campaign. carl? the info from there? >> chris: first of all, no one has left the hall here. people are milling about, in fact, still coming in. no word on mitt romney making any kind of a concession speech. in fact, romney aides are frantically crunching numbers. and let's talk a little bit about ohio's recount rules. there is automatic recount if it's one quarter of 1%. not in that range right now. it wouldn't qualify where things are but when mitt romney leads in the popular vote, there is still a quarter of the vote in ohio out and this is called, there is reason for republicans to be somewhat frustrated.

romney campaign down beat concerned about ability to run the table and catch up. over the top with ohio coal. but republic campaign isn't accepting this call yet. they recognize it's close and may hold. until such time as they see the rest of the voting. particularly from the rural areas from ohio where mr. romney has been popular. they will stand pat. we will see no candidate giving a speech here until more of the vote in ohio is in. >> bret: how many people you have talked to tonight about this race and i know you have talked to a million of them. so, they are looking at florida. they are looking at virginia and they just don't believe ohio. >> all year long the polls have been within the margin only a couple times did president obama get outside the margin. few points early in the year where the president was up 7 points or so after the debate. mitt romney up 7%. rest of the time it's been within the margin of error.

so, it shouldn't be a surprise that the quintessential bellwether battleground state of ohio would be close. and and we have been saying for weeks that it might not be resolved in this calendar day. it might spill into wednesday. perhaps even further. so, the rush to 270, they think has been accelerated too much. and, again, there has been some cautionary sort of down beat attitude. visible and expressed by some of the senior romney staff during the course of the evening. but, absent the ohio call that they dispute, there is still a thin path for him to get there were he to run the remaining table. that also assumes that romney could win in florida. pick up nevada and colorado. knot easy. no plans to come down. to give you an example of their hesitancy there will be a family picture in -- opportunity for us to get seclusion watching the rushes.

relaxing. crossing their fingers, knocking on doors and hoping. that has been consistently delayed as we wait. romney campaign wants more waiting tonight, bret. >> bret: okay, carl. here is what we are going to do. carl rove said that we should figure out what the deal is with this decision desk. the decision desk is in a different place. what it takes to get there megyn, i will escort you down the steps here so you can go interview them. watch your step. >> megyn: thank you. i don't want to fall in front of these millions of people. >> bret: go to the decision desk and interview them about the decision on ohio. >> megyn: try to get to the bottom of this. right out the door. they used to keep them right here with us in the studio. and then for some reason, whoa, careful. then for some reason they moved them down the hall.

we were too close. we were thinking this wouldn't be necessary. but, as it turns out. so you can see this is sort of all the folks behind the scenes who have been watching the program from back here. hi hi, guys. arearthur aidala decided to joi. they are way down the hall we'll do interrogation and see this they stand by their call that carl rove has attempted to place. keep coming. here we go. now, when we practiced this before -- there is the beautiful jenna lee. when we practiced this before in our rehearsals, we lost all audio in our ears. right about here. that's happening again. >> bret: can you hear me megyn >> she can't hear me. >> megyn: this is the decision desk. now we are in the heart of the decision desk room.

you have been doing all the number crunching. these guys behind you. you tell me whether you stand by your call in ohio given the doubts carl rove just raised. >> we are actually quite comfortable with the call in ohio. right now there is too much obama vote that's outstanding there that we know is going to come in, that is going to be obama and while, yes, there are a number of counties out there that will be romney. the largest thing that's outstanding right now is the cleveland area, is cuyahoga. this is democratic territory and we're quite comfortable with the idea that obama will carry ohio. >> megyn: what do you make of it, chris? >> there just aren't enough republic votes yet for mitt romney to get there. and cuyahoga county, cleveland is so overwhelmingly democratic. we wouldn't expect mitt romney to do much more than a third the vote there. so as the late vote comes in, we would expect to see the president's margin rising. >> i don't have carl with me. explain his theory and why you disagree with it.

>> it's not that i disagree with his theory. what he is saying is that this is going to be closer and that there is still a lot of vote to be counted and that you have provisionals. what we're saying is that the amount of raw vote that's in these counties that's out there still waiting to come in, is so large and the historical trend is so strong and the polling is so strong about how democratic these counties are it's just not -- no matter what the republic precincts out there are it's not going to make it. >> megyn: is this possibly exit poll thing that we saw. the exit polls were so wrong in 2004. they were say nothing way that george bush can overcome it no way, no way, no way and then he did. is this similar to that? >> what we are looking at is actual raw vote by county by county, city by city and what we're seeing is sufficient vote in ohio on the democratic side to mean that ohio will go for obama. >> megyn: percent certainty. >> 99.95%. >> megyn: there you have it.

i can't hear bret or the folks back at the studio. they seem very confident. we will take it back to you and see whether carl is backing down. >> bret: okay, megyn. carl is coming back up here to the desk. is he crunching numbers. is he writing furiously. he is pointing at bill hemmer. things are going on right now. we will take a break and carl's response to the challenge and the response from the decision desk after this break. we have called ohio for president obama and we have put the checkmark next to president obama's name that he has been reelected the president of the united states as you look live at obama headquarters in chicago. carl rove's response again after this. [ woman ] i don't know. i just can't imagine

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sinus and headache relief. >> bret: welcome back to america's election headquarters. as you see, the graphic there, barack obama reelected president. that's our call from the decision desk as you saw megyn kelly just walking down to talk to them. the white house, there is already a crowd in front of the white house as you look live there at 1600 pennsylvania avenue. some people gathered there to cheer and celebrate. and there at obama headquarters in chicago getting ready for whatever the celebration will be there. we are back now live here with the returning megyn kelly. >> megyn: just made it. it's it a long way down to the decision desk. >> bret: you did very well. joining us with his retort carl rove. >> i don't know if it's a

retort. it's just a question which is we have 4.5 million votes in, roughly. and we have a difference of 991 votes between the two candidates, according to the secretary of state's web site. there were 5.7 million votes cast last time around. if we had just simply the same number of people to cast votes, that would be about 1.2 million people out. if you look at cuyahoga county, 414,000 votes have already been cast. last time around 668,000 were cast. so somewhere around 260,000 votes would still come out of cuyahoga county. out of hamilton county, which is cincinnati at the other end of the state, 206,000 votes have been cast. 425,000 were cast last time around. about 220 yet to be cast in that county, and then there are a bunch of cats and dogs elsewhere which add up to another 720,000 votes. now, it may be that barack obama wins the state, but it

seems to me that, you know, you have got a lot of votes yet to cast. and while you do have a chunk out in cuyahoga county, you got a chunk out in hamilton county, the city of cincinnati came in early. what remains according to -- at least according to the romney people is primarily the -- in fact exclusively the republic suburbs of hamilton county. >> megyn: they said that they expect big returns in cuyahoga county and that's democratic county and they are going to get big numbers in there from there that will favor the president and not mitt romney. >> that's right. here is the point. we have already had 414,000 votes cast in that county. there were 668 cast the last time around. so i'm just using what was cast last time around. that would be about 258,000 in that county. we have got 220,000 in hamilton. we have got another county called delaware which is a good suburban republic county north of columbus they have had 56,000 votes cast. they will have at least another 50,000 votes cast. they will sort of like a

republic cuyahoga county in their percentages. all i'm saying is look we have had one instance where something was prematurely called. >> bret: you know it well. >> i know it well. >> megyn: they said it's not going to be another one. >> maybe not. when you are sitting there with 4.4 million votes cast. a difference of 991 votes between the two candidates, the difference is 49.19 to 49.17, a little bit of caution might not be better -- if it's going to happen, let the votes begin to show it let the rest of cuyahoga come in. let some more hamilton come in. and start to see some of that separation so you are validating it, not doing what it seems to me to be a very early call with 991 votes separating the two. >> megyn: i went back there and talked to them back there -- >> -- and they are very smart guys. i'm just saying in terms of public perception, it looks a little odd for us to be making a call with 991 votes. >> megyn: you know how science works.

they know the counties and expected makeup of the remaining electorate. >> look, they have bigger data set than i do. i'm sitting here saying i know cuyahoga of that 258,000 votes it's going to be 70/30 in all likelihood. in the hamilton one depending what's out 60/40 the other way. >> bret: they are confident back there, carl. we will keep on going back and forth. i don't know if we will send megyn walking again. >> megyn: i think we should bring them out here to sit next to carl and have them go toe to toe, duke it out. bring michael barone in. >> bring the biggest brain in the world on this issue. >> megyn: make them walk down to us this time. >> bret: go with the left hander, michael barone. you are looking live at times square. we want to bring in dr. charles krauthammer who is a psychiatrist and he he may be able to weigh in with some of the back and forth that we have seen here in new york.

charles? >> well, i know enough about psychiatry that i don't get between carl rove and the decision desk. so i'm going to leave the titans to fight it out and i will simply go with what is pretty clear that even -- i mean, it's almost -- chances are that -- romney could pull this out. i think the real story here is that obama won he has got no mandate. he won by going very small, very negative, and we are left as a country exactly where we started but a little bit worse off. the republicans are in control of the house, probably a little bit stronger. they are not going to budge. there is no way after holding out on obama for two years they are going to cave. in obama doesn't have anywhere really to go. he governed very large in the first two years when he had control of the congress. he nationalized healthcare. he passed a largest stimulus which was all kinds of industrial policy, supporting green energy. all of the large ideas.

and he tried to enact them. then when he lost control of the house he stopped. in order to win re-election, he went small, stayed small, and he put together his constituencies here and there. and he put it together enough that he won. he probably -- if he gets a majority in the popular vote, it will be very small. if there is any. and even in the electoral, i think it's going to be a rather small majority, particularly if virginia, florida, will go to romney. so this is not a mandate either in the numbers or in the way that he campaigned. he did not campaign on any ideas. anything large, anything important. he didn't address entitlements or tax reform or anything like that. what will he do? he will go back to who he is people say he should have a second term but is he not a moderate. is he a man of the left.

he will try to push his agenda through with what he thinks is a mandate. we will be where we were a year ago with the debt ceiling argument next year. the problem is the country will slide right through a second term because i don't see give on either side. particularly when the president, with a very weak mandate for a second term. that sounds kind of negative, i know. i think i have depressed half the country. as a psychiatrist i will offer to write prescriptions for anybody who needs them right now. just write me at fox news. i will take care of it. >> megyn: as a lawyer i council you not to do that. what does this mean for the republic party? >> i'm not as despairing as many people are i think this is an unusual election because romney was a transitional figure. i thought he ran as good a campaign as he could. he did honorably well. he came pretty close. but he was a man -- he is a northeastern liberal and that's not where we are going.

the two northeastern liberals who ran as senators or mad democrats massachusetts and maybe maine lost. that's not where the future of the party is. i'm optomystic there was a republic bench that did not enter the fray. we had a very weak field among in choosing this candidate this year. romney was the only one remotely presidential and he was the logical candidate. think of those who didn't run of course paul ryan who i think will be be a leader in the party. have a whole rising young generation. kelly eye yacht. bobby jindal, nikki haley. cruise, the new senator from texas. marco rubio, this whole generation who are just a year or two short in their careers from running this time are all going to be in the fray next time. and i think they are the future. and all the soul searching about what ideology we are going to pursue is going to come from them.

i think it will be a fairly reaganite and conservative one. i think the future of the party is quite bright. >> bret: charles, thank you. as always we have many days to talk about that on the panel. >> megyn: we will look forward to that where are we going now? >> bret: we are going to break. >> megyn: a lot of drama coming up including we are going to bring out michael barone and hear from what what we heard from carl. the folks at chicago are not listening to carl, they don't care about what karl said. they are happy about the call we have made from decision desk projecting that barack obama has not only won the state of ohio but re-election as president of the united states. stay with us. [ male announcer ] at scottrade,

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>> bret: welcome back to america's election headquarters, you are looking at the board for ohio. fox news decision desk has called that state for president obama and we have called the election for president obama after getting ohio's wins a well as iowa and oregon. the associated press also

calling ohio for president obama. let's look live now in cuyahoga county, ohio. they are still there in cuyahoga county. that's a live look. and we were told by eric shawn who is there that they were counting ballots, just a short time ago. we're back here in new york with a showdown of sorts. >> megyn: they don't look like they are counting. they look like they are done. >> bret: they do. >> megyn: we have brought the two guys together to have a discussion that may be illuminating to all of us. carl rove is now here along with michael barone back there with the decision desk. we would like to refer to this as cage match 2012. bring it, go. >> we are not going to be that impolite. let's go back. >> at the time that we did it, the numbers being shown on the

fox crawl were behind the secretary of state's numbers by 4%. and, for example, right now we just showed 2.2 million or so thereabouts for each one of these guys. the secretary of state shows 2,473,492 for obama to 2,493,901 for romney. now the gap which was 911, whenever this pseudo cage match began is 996 for president obama. we still have 700,000 votes or more likely to count. and so the question was, at a point when the secretary of state's web site was saying 911 votes difference, we were raising the cautionary note whether it might have been wise to wait longer until things started to open up a little bit. >> well, when this discussion started off i took a look at the votes remaining out in the counties, karl. and what had happened between the time we called it and the time that you got some of these figures that were later than the call was that butler

county came in with the votes, something like 39% of the precincts in butler county north of cincinnati. it's where mitt romney ran that big rally last friday. speaker john -- those folks came. in that's what narrowed the margin. we have still got some votes out there in delaware county, north of columbus, which is heavily republic and warren county, northeast of cincinnati on i-71. those are going to be there. we have half the pretickets -- precincts in cuyahoga county. there are republic suburbs in cuyahoga county. the precincts that are in are about 68% of obama. it was about 68% of obama four years ago. i don't think there is reason to believe that huge republic territory is waiting to come in there even if the republicans carry parma, the famous place with the bowling alleys and stuff. hamilton county, cincinnati, when i looked at it, they basically had about 55% obama

for the county. he won 53% there. what that says to me is he is not getting the vote in has not absorbed all of the black precincts in the central city. it's a mixture of central city suburbs. >> bret: karl, you are now looking at numbers that you can say -- >> -- if we were calling this with 29,000 i would be more accepting than the secretary of state with 911. this is the smartest guy in america when it comes to precinct results. i'm raising question of our responsibility to call these things when it appears to ordinary americans that we are not leading the pack for the sake of leading the pack but calling it. >> bret: maybe we got you a slow computer back there. >> i think i can speak. >> there is also a difference of intelligence here. for example, hamilton county the people i'm talking to are saying the city of cincinnati remains suburbs they are confident there is a good shot of romney carrying the county because of what is out. for example, when we called it, the speaker of the pro

tem, state house district had only reported 3% of its vote which is a strong republic territory. i'm just raising the cautionary note -- cautionary concern when we did it we had 2, 100ths of a percent separating these guys. >> megyn: we will have to get to a break in a minute. do you feel confident now, karl? >> look, i'm not -- that's why we have these smart guys sitting here in quarantined away from the rest of us to make the call. i just wanted to raise the question which i did to chris that we made the call which the point when the secretary of state's web site was showing and i'm a little sensitive about this having been through this in 2000 when people sort of jumped the gun based on in that kaser reasonnous data. >> we called it when we had the statistical parameters were very conducive to a call. >> bret: we're on the same page now. >> this is not a cage match as you -- >> megyn: no. a polite discussion between two brilliant guys.

>> bret: karl, michael, thank you. one call nevada for president obama on the other side of the break. we'll add it all up. keep it here. i know the name of eight princesses. i'm an expert on softball. and tea parties. i'll have more awkward conversations than i'm equipped for because i'm raising two girls on my own. i'll worry about the economy more than a few times before they're grown.

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... nothing transforms schools like investing in advanced teacher education. let's build a strong foundation. let's invest in our teachers so they can inspire our students. let's solve this. >> bret: welcome back to america's election headquarters, you are looking live at what's called the heat map. that's the national popular vote. those are all counties, the red are republic, the blue democrat. the yellow, the difference is within 3% either way. that's what pops up in the yellow there. we did just before the break call nevada for president obama. those six electoral votes now go to the president's column. and we can put up the electoral map. i believe the number now stands above 300. the number of electoral votes

not yet 281 for president obama. 203 for governor romney. again, we still have florida out there. we still have virginia out there. and we still have colorado too close to call. but we have called this race for president obama and his re-election. we are all on the same page. >> megyn: i i want to go live to chicago and take a look at team obama's headquarters where the crowd is getting fired up and our own ed henry is there live. ed? >> that's right, megyn. they are loud. they have been loud for well over an hour now.

capital of the country. it shows that even though a lot of the exit polling has been suggesting that the economy. this was able to pull together a case. inherited a crisis. do his best. he still has not finished turning this around. somehow he convinced voters that it's good enough to give him four more years. they are elated behind me. we are told that more people will be streaming in. we don't have a crowd count yet. the president is across town at the fairmont hotel. we are told he is meeting with staff. thanking him for this victory. i have been reaching out with

top aides. trying to get a sense if they have had any contact with the romney camp. so far they have said there has not been any direct contact to see whether or not all is coming in from governor romney. but if we get that we will come right back to you. >> bret: ed, this is still a clearly divided country. vote total, there is not much difference both sides have huge support on both sides. and there, you can see the difference, 230,000 votes, separating barack obama and mitt romney in the national total, tied at 49-49. this, i mean, as you look at this battle, this race has yet to go. we have yet to call other states. and you talk about a mandate. you talk about what the president is going to do. you've been covering this white house we've been talking about there is no sign he had any moderation during 2010 or

after 2010. yet, you hear from robert gibs and others he's ready to negotiate on things with republicans in the house on capitol hill. you said tonight about the way forward for president obama the second term. >> right. you put your finger on it. after the 2010 mid terms when he had a chance to move more to the senate like bill clinton did, we saw the president make moves in that direction. but did not do it the way clinton did. continue to the left with some of his rhetoric about taxing the rich. and he won reelection with that. what message will this white house take with that? very important to watch closely tonight. we'll get a first signal from the president after he gets his phone call from mitt romney and comes on the stage behind me. >> does he reach out to republicans? they have a huge debt deal sitting there they have to work on. the spending cuts coming on january 2. massive spending cuts. tax increases are coming as

the bush tax rates expire at the end of the year. there is so much business on the table he has a dramatic challenge but also a dramatic opportunity here, look at the fact this is still a 50-50 country. you have the house staying in republican hands. the senate staying in democratic hands. we haven't changed very much here with the results. it's a dramatic opportunity for him tonight to reach across the aisle and show some sort of way forward in the next four years that is different than what we've seen over the last four. >> had you tu. >> now let's head to romney head quarters and carl cameron. you heard ed henry rever yens a call the obama folks say they haven't had yesterday. >> and the room is packing up. we have seen a number officials beginning to stir as though something is about to unfold. i talked with some senior folks by e mail and text message. there has not been a

concession call. they're gearing up for that. the romney campaign believes the call in ohio, and this room full of voters and republican electorate deserves a fight to go to the last vote. mitt romney went to ohio and pennsylvania on election day to work for those as his aides said on behalf of people struggling for work. they're not going to give up until the last votes are counted but it is expected. mitt romney being a man of manners is going to make that phone call if the numbers don't shift dramatically in the next few minutes. we do suspect the phone call to happen. once it's closer and due diligence and time played itself out. thereafter, we'll see mr. romney speak at the podium. official and behind the scenes sort of choreography has a lot of moving parts. to get him here to the

convention hall where folks are waiting is going to take a few minutes after this long billion dollar campaign with all of the ads, with all of the volunteers and votes, with all of the many, many long hours and campaign days, a few more minutes here and there in their view is what voters deserve. >> assuming that mitt romney does concede the race at some point and last vote is counted it does not got way he wants it to go what is your recommendation about what is next? well, he's made it clear he doesn't plan to run again. he's not going to step away from politics or any presidential nominee becomes a very loud voice and will be on a major power broker in the republican party. there is a feel of monday morning quarterbacking and second guessing underway. what could they have done better, those questions.

they have acknowledged there is a period may, june, july, the president's campaign unleashed attack ads on romney's business records they might have spend more money on defending and promoting the positive aspects of his personality. $30 million is a number they batted around to spend but never did. there is a question as to whether or not he moderated soon enough. mr. romney and republican campaign was still working to unify the g.o.p. base long after he clinched the nomination. in some arguments continue to do that in the republican national convention when often, in the past conventions have been used by candidates to pivot to a more moderate position to court independent swing voters for general election day. in the case of the romney campaign his issues didn't come out to that first debate. then he was talking about bipartisanship. they think perhaps that could have started earlier, conservatives arguing the problem is that there wasn't enough conservatism sustained

with a focused argument against the policies and lastly there is a question of whether or not the romney campaign's rigid adhere yens to a disciplined economic message didn't at sometime come at the exclusion of other opportunities whether that is a discussion of foreign policy and what happened in benghazi, etc., romney stuck with the question and even that, they're questioning. this will be litigated in the public and political circles and parlors in washington and across the country for months. >> thank you very much. nice job as they're playing that audio over his shoulder. of him talking. delayed. that is pretty good. >> thank you. >> we have an election alert now. >> just getting this in. yes. >> fox news can pro jokt president obama will win colorado and nine electoral votes.

previously classified colorado too close to call. the fox decision desk is confident president obama will win the state of colorado that brings us to our electoral map. we can see what the score is there. 290 for president obama. to 03 for mitt romney. again, 270 electoral votes needed to take the white house. president obama will be be reelected. we're live outside of the white house there. people are gathering. obama supporters, to celebrate. >> you can see the park there. folks getting news probably not of colorado but of ohio and projections being made now. to our panel, you talk now as we can see swing states coming in, colorado, i mean that is supposed to be one that is leaning romney, they -- there wasn't one in question. at least, thus far that went for romney. and what does that mean?

>> well, it's interesting. you go back to the conversation before suggests polling taking over this, these many months was more accurate than it wasn't. and you saw, you take ohio, looking at polling going from election day going back to april, may there are two, or three polls, serious polls where mitt romney surged into a lead. and ended up with president obama winning others. i think this case mitt romney went and ran a tough campaign i think a classy campaign. he had many people working for him who devoted their lives to doing this, spent time doing nothing but this for the past year. and ultimately came up short. i would argue in part because his campaign wasn't -- didn't provide enough of a contrast to voters. >> you say he ran a classy campaign.

there has been talk about a negative campaign run by president obama. you look, that is clear. but what does this mean for future elections? that there is nothing but negativity? did tonight prove that that works? you know? to be above board or classy didn't pay dividends. >> mitt romney faced difficult attacks on president obama, some of which qr question bid fact checkers so it was a tough campaign. there is no question president obama's campaign starting very early before mitt romney was the republican nominee knew they're going to try to run by appealing to the base, and declining the -- defining the republican as extreme and out of touch. they defined him as carl cameron suggests. and there is no questioning it's inescapeable that that

worked in this instance. >> yes. well, romney should have defined himself. that is the biggest mistake they'll look back and realize. remember there is a lot of conversations about why is obama spending all of this money? he was running out of money. it was because they decided we're going to go in early on and bombard people and define mitt romney who is a blank slate, basically. you have to remember right now in the united states there are two things less popular than wall street people. he's in the a wall street person. they convinced people he kind of was. romney has to sort of undo this when he comes into the debates and does a good job. i think that was a really bad mistake. i think that they are great people and the campaign but the obama campaign tackicly was a superior campaign.

there is no question in my mind that that is true. >> big answer to your question is that latino voters and black voters in bigger numbers turned out and fit models polls had did not fit models romney campaign hoped for. and young voters, and women voters came back again to fit 08 model, gender gap reappeared. in all of those way what's we're seeing, i think is a new kind of politics. you look back in american history. what has driven us for a large measure, large part of the last part of the 20th century was a blue collar, white vote. that drove, i think republicans to win coming from 68 forward most of the time. i think we're in a new phase now and the kintd -- kind of alienation republicans demonstrated towards latinos in terms of immigration reform did not pay off with them.

you can talk with jeb bush about this, he just sees this as self destructive and hurtful. now, just let me adhere, i don't think that the romney people are, have clean hands here, i think just last week they're sighing jeep is going send jobs to china, that is just not right. i think that makes a difference. when you look at the attacks romney campaign had this is a hard ball campaign. i mean both sides were throwing dirt. the dirt that confirms your point i think had to do with defining romney early as that bain guy. the question is how does the republican party respond? or we're going to have to change the way we do business. >> when you look at the map behind me, different counties throughout the country, and where they stand, republican or democrat there is just a

ton of red on that map. the blue democrats, the yellow, these counties within 3% percentage points. you talk about the country where it is. and what kind of campaign is and we're going to be now be forever dealing with 10 battle ground states we can just start at the beginning of a campaign and just dump all kinds of money and 10 battle ground states? that is it? >> i think the number of battle ground states is a little bit larger this time. it's the same map we've been looking at. i think the question all of this leads to is could mitt romney, with a different campaign have won this election? given the conditions in the country i think this is going to be hard to say this was not a winable election for the challenger. i will look to the things my colleagues pointed out is that they let the president define

him, they left unanswered attacks on him answered in bain capitalist, if you will. and it left to him the candidate to try to undo it all. he went a long way to doing that if you think about it. more perhaps than others and he came close but in the end looked like he was kind of behind all the way. and he was never able to -- now we're going to see recrimination. demographic factors are legal. the republican party going to have to ask itself did the hard line mitt romney took to try to win this election is in the long run a winning position but karl rove and george hw bush never thought so. they're saying mitt romney wasn't conservative enough, some will say have you to point to that issue.

>> it looks now that this president will be reelected with fewer electoral votes than he won the first time. first president, ever to be reelected with fewer electoral votes z probably a popular vote total that is very, very close. the split being very narrow. >> which will add to the feeling among a lot of people this is a winable election. >> now, it stands at 114,000. separating the two candidates in the popular vote. >> that is smaller than the bargain by which george w. bush won ohio in 2004. >> right. >> with romney leading in the popular vote. >> my prediction was that president obama, again would win battle ground states, win electoral college votes but i thought woe lose the popular vote. that tells you something about who we are. you said we're polarized.

you look at the map behind you. that is very small population. you look where big populations are, where college educated and economy is growing that is where blue is. >> if, if mitt romney were to win the popular vote it will be fun to see whether there is an outbreak of shoe on the other foot disease, republicans deciding the way democrats did in 2000. this electoral college has got to -- . >> remember, california had a measured past? which meant whoever won the popular vote would get california? >> electric toreal college is never going to be given up it would be a reversal. >> coming up... look at this. >> we're going to take a look at twitter and find out what folks are saying online tonight. we're told tonight was the most-tweeted event, ever. most-tweeted political event, ever. i'm a conservative investor.

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welcome back to america's election headquarters here in new york city. we have called this race for president barack obama, reelected, yes, he's trailing now in popular vote. as you can see, take a look at that. it's closing but he's still trailing mitt romney at this

hour by 21,000 votes. >> you can see there on the screen, the electoral college map. we have president obama with 290 votes. he needed 270. mitt romney with 203. fox news projecting not only has the president won ohio but also iowa and won colorado. some of the critical swing states we're also waiting on starting to come in. we brought those to you moments ago. >> fox news is partnering with twitter tonight watching traffic through social media. and jenna lee is following that. >> you've been quiet on twitter tonight. >> i've been busy. >> hard at work, right? >> we hadn't seen a lot of twitter traffic. >> sure. >> that is tough competition between you two. >> taking your tweets now. >> megyn has got people, i'm watching you, bret. >> not true. >> regardless of all of the things we're talking about, anything record night on

social media at its peak 327,000 tweets per minute that is more than double the previous record for any political event in total, today, we're seeing more than 31 million election-related tweets so far. so just for comparison sake first debate we saw 20 million tweets this, shows a snap shot of what the national conversation is when it comes to politics. take a look at twitter volume we're going show you what the spike looks like. you can see we started our coverage. once calls started to be made you see the spike there around 11:00 p.m. the president taking to twitter. to quickly respond to some of the calls he was he elected. the president sent his first tweet on election night in 2008 so he's back this election night as well. his message says this. we're all in this together. that is how we campaigned and that is who we are. thank you. he signed it, bo, that is how

we know it's from him. the next tweet around, again, was this picture. a file photo of him hugging the first lady. saying the first ladies more popular than him. this is the most retweeted tweet he's ever sent in four years in office, it's only been an hour since sent out. our brain room tells us 9,000 tweets sent by both campaigns throughout the election season. the president campaigned outtweeted romney 8-1. that is a fact. we'll talk about strategy i'm hur to but that is tonight. record night. on social media. >> so you outtweeted him. >> that is going to be the post mortem discussion. >> you follow us and let us know what you think. we're reading those and responding when we can. joining us now is pat and you

have been critical of the president and raised questions about a year ago about whether if he won reelection whether he'd have a mandate. >> yes. >> thoughts on that now? >> you look at numbers he's going to win. he did it by, it's, i had written about dividing the country. from hope and change to what i call divide and conquer. he put a brilliant field orientation together, and he attack his opponent. the romney campaign, have been critical. they've failed in terms of their campaign. in particular ji just two weeks on libya. but we have a bigger problem here for republicans. look at the senate race. look at the presidential. the romney has won one state so far. the sweng states, north carolina barely. the republicans have lost ground in the senate. senate is a democrat seat

they're losing hispanics, women. branding problem on the republican party is reminiscent of i lick to say of the wigs if they don't do something to expand their appeal they're going to keep getting these elections.. >> reach out to minorities. >> minorities. yes. look two things tonight. it's the highest it's been since franklin roosevelt was president in the middle of a real depression. in exit polls others have commented and i saw it from the beginning on the whether if he wants big government or small government it's about a 10 point margin with this elector yil yit tonight for smaller government. republicans can't, were not winning with that. that tells you something is wrong. and you know, if you look deeper into results you get more worried.

>> when you look at that popular vote and you see how divided the country is and how more voted for romney than obama tonight look at -- look. >> divided. >> look how divided and right down to raw numbers in popular vote in romney's case. so why would those people who voted for mitt romney be asking themselves we have to reevaluate who we are and what we stand for whit comes to immigration. why would they say we need to reinvent ourselves to appeal to a sliver in the middle? >> it has to be more of a party of no. i saw governor romney fail to articulate convincingly what he was going to do to change the country. he's then got attacked in return. this is a low brow election, let's face it. what we're missing in this

country is that we have 70% of the country agree on large concepts. this transaction, our motto from both parties is that we asked people what their price is. we don't ask them their idealism. that is the problem, splitting this popular vote when you're taking these states athat cannot put it over in senate races look what's happening there. they should have won the senate this time. >> this is the second time republicans had a shot at the senate. >> yes. >> they, but this is bigger. >> right. >> they had 23 democratic seats up, almost a dozen of them. >> and they're going to lose seats. >> pat on presidential campaign there is criticism at first, we're spend sog much money, burning cash, setting up offices and spending a lot on ads early. and it looks like tonight that

that worked. >> yes. >> the organizational efforts worked. and i said republicans feeded to defeat barack obama by june of this year. in return president obama knew they had to do was this demonize governor romney in swing states. look how close states are. in that, the ground game is real. the fact they kept north carolina this close, florida, whatever, they did an outstanding job. >> what -- we talked about another piece of your prediction a year ago. ended up showing to win he's going to have to run the most negative campaign. he had a campaign z confesses it was negative on both sides. but the president's team had statements calling everything from calling mitt romney to a

felon to a possible liar and responsible for a woman's death with cancer. is this our future? is that both guys are going to fight bare knuckles? >> the problem is that the great majority of the country wants something bigger. this negative attacks, romney should ask the president whether' fwrees but we can't have a campaign on negativity alone. there is a vast majority, i don't mean 51%. i'm talking 65 look at washington and disapprove of it. they're getting same status quo but they want something to inspire them. we've lost that music in politics. to with able to field to people. >> to seconds. anything going to get done with the president he elected

in a same structure with speakor boehner? >> given how divided and republicans are about their campaign and given the fact we're going through this through libya? i think this is going to be difficult for the president. he may get a temporary solution. we're still in gridlock. >> thank you. >> coming up... we're waiting remarks from president obama. we have yet to hear anything about a phone call from mitt romney to the president. you heard karl they believe every vote needs to be counted. they worked hard for everyone of them. we'll continue to watch and more analysis with our panel including going back to space cowboys. >> president obama taken the lead now in the popular vote for the time being.

we're back to election headquarters. there, you see the numbers, numbers we've been looking at all night. the only lead that matters is the one on the right side. screen. 290 electoral votes to mitt romney's 203. we have florida out there and also virginia too close to call. one of the things we haven't auked about are ballot initiatives. there are a number of them on another estate ballot. one of them has just been approved. colorado voter as proved ballot initiative to regulate marijuana like alcohol.

this is called prop 64. we're live in denver. >> yes. amendment 64 passing here in colorado. amendment 64 had bipartisan opposition as well as bipartisan support. the governor put out a statement saying something to the effect that voters here have spoken however, folks do have to keep in mind marijuana being legal in the state of colorado will remain illegal in the united states. so this is a quote. don't pull out the cheatoes and gold fish too quickly. he's warning folks there could be a problem when it comes to a possible federal fight something is expected by folks on the opposition side. that is something that just passed getting quite a bit of attention and on twitter there are celebrities saying they're heading here moving to colorado. colorado some people are concerned about that the new

reputation this state will have getting new visitors here maybe along the lines of folks may be in new hampshire now. >> that is the quote? about cheato? >> that is a quote sent from public information officer from the governor's office. that hit twitter right way. everybody here started joking about it but what sound like something the governor there would say. that is along the line of his personality. he is taking this in stride. we do anticipate a fight. this isn't something going to go into affect immediately. you're going to have this fight between the state and federal government. >> thank you. and i'm sure that will be headed for perhaps legal action. you never know you think? >> ya think? >> colorado, the governor there and democrats pulled off a win. >> that cheetos thing went through quick.

one wonders where he got that information from. we want to check in with our space cowboys has we've been calling them. >> we're okay. >> we're good. there is a little flurry. >> we provided entertainment. in any case, nevertheless,. >> it's been entertaining for you. >> look. i think you're right. in any case we spend billions of dollars, cross roads that you help found spends $325 billion ending wupt same president, same testimonyic majority and same republican majority in the house. was it worng it? yes. >> if president obama came out of the box may 15th with $215 million of advertising over two and a half months.

designed to demonize mitt romney this, is the first president ever he elected to a second term with a smaller vote in the electoral college the second time around. >> what does that say? >> he's blown last two years, and by being bigger, and he has been smaller. this is about the fact mitt romney was with a wife who is an admitted equestrian. we have little confidence that, the fact of the matter is that not a single battle ground state which is adept has the president increased vote margins. that is saying something about how he's won the battle but may have lost the war.

second terms are difficult for presidents. they're difficult if you broaden support and if you offer up a positive vision. we've seen none of that in this race. >> what do you think is the possibility? he has made gestures in that direction. perhaps getting the independent vote? what is the chance that he somehow finds that sweet spot? >> may not be in a mood to take two. >> that could be the problem there. this thing you have to remember about the victory tonight, i understand what they're saying no president ever has been, how many times have we heard no president has been reelected with unemployment above 7.2%.

>> not since 1940. >> it's -- there is a reason this is so tough to win. because of where the question was. and they overcame them because they did define romney early. romney did respond to them. you started looking at what people are saying and focus through. in polls about benefiting the rich and obama fighting for middle class. that got into the drinking water i thought in focus groups you can see undecided were resistant to romney because of the approach. only person that could have done that was romney. because it's the campaign that has to put positive side of the argument out.

>> we're hearing a lot of republican bashing and losers have to take the bashing. does this say something about republican party being out of touch with women and hispanics? is there something they need to do? >> i'm worried about the latino vote. they're socialsy conservative, patriotic church going family oriented people who are very entrepreneur yil. they ought to be part of our coalition. one thing about president obama is look. this, his problem is going to be that he's projected this campaign in such a way if he wants to sort of find a grand bargain it's going to be difficult for him to do so. a president needs to be first to compromise and to be careful about his language. this guy has said no compromises and my opponents are unpatriotic skpun american. it's going to be hard now to turn around and do -- dot things he's neglected doing

for months and months and years. that is building across the aisle channels of communication and trust that can cause people to say do you know what? election is over. let's work with them. he's got to start by being bigger and resisting impulse that's guided him and being first guy to make compromises.. >> thank you. we may get a sense of whether president obama is listening to the kind of counsel we've heard from his accept stance speech. >> moments from now, we believe. thank you. want to get live to carl cameron. >> we're beginning to get information about the timetable. senior aides let us know we expect the speech to happen at 12:55 a.m. or there abouts.

he's in his suite in the hotel here in the convention center only a short distance from here, given the next few moments he'll put finishing touches on the speech. his aides told me he had only written one speech, so they're doing rewrites. he'll make the phone call to the president we'll see him in a little over an hour from now. >> thank you. >> and let's head over to bill hammer standing by at the bill board we have two states, bill, we haven't called. >> that is virginia and florida in virginia now talking about these northern counties. barack obama did very well in places like fairfax county four years ago. did well again this year. crunching numbers looks like mitt romney picked up at least two counts here in places like fairfax county and those are

strong population centers there. we're waiting to get a call whether or not that would have been for the governor. down here in florida this is 2% of the vote counted down there in florida around eight million vote tally. about what you had in 2008. also in 2004. remember we heard often democrats talking about their mid western wire wall? they're talking about ohio, wisconsin and iowa. in the event mitt romney were to get out of north carolina and virginia how would they stop this from east to west? they can talk about this move right aare here taking states there, turning them between iowa, wisconsin and ohio.

one thing sticks out is organizing on the ground. barack obama paid people to stay there and identify voters. republicans thinking they only got up to speed since september department. >> thank you. >> stay with us. braik we're going to talk with charles kraut hammer again. we'll be of use to people who are trying to analyze what happened tonight and how. stay with us here live on america's election headquarters.

welcome back to america's election election headquarters we're awaiting a speech from governor romney expected in the next six minutes or so. we wait for that. let's head back down to washington. >> want to bring back in

charles krauthammer. i want to take up with you a point we're discussing with pat gidel saying republicans suffered a loss tonight but popular vote was down the middle. electorate shows the country is now dems plus six. it's 38-32, dems to republicans. in swing states, democrats have the advantage but when you have this split, do republicans, are they likely to start reinventing? >> they are and they should. this is a panicked reaction. if you have it split just about evenly. it tells you obama ran a better campaign. means you have to run a smarter campaign and find the way to match the game and there is a lot of tactics

involved in here. there is one issue, republicans have to find a way to address hispanics but now this is this large issue we have to look at for the changing demographics. no there is one constituency republicans have to rethink. here is the problem. we saw in exit polls people believe smaller government is better. by a large margin. republicans are the party of small government. they to not have the best candidate to articulate that. romney is a northeast liberal or moderate. he did have a credable campaign. but it wasn't natural to him. and you know, he spoke conservatism as a second language. there are another generation of conservatives rubios and ryans who are rising can make

that argument naturally and the country will welcome that argument. particularly after a failed second obama term. >> just want to make a point numbers showing now president obama got more support from hispanic community this time around than he did the last. >> we noi confirm that governor romney has called president obama to concede this race. he's called president obama. we expect that governor romney will be speaking in just a matter of minutes. charles, reflect back on romney's campaign, if you will. and what went wrong? what went right? >> our issue had to deal with hispanic vote. you mentioned the increase in the hispanic vote for obama.

romney went to the right of rick perry during the primaries and took a extreme position on immigration. this is not structureal. imagine that next time around you have a marco rubio as nominee this, is a problem for a -- or, a jeb bush who has tremendous support from hispanics this, is an issue that is not structural. i think he did well but made one huge mistake in the end. he went defensive and after first debate he had momentum. remember, last monday, he was up in national polls in gallup. they're going to reflect the way it is now. he was up by about five, with that he would have won just about all of the swing states

same way obama did because there is a swing. a bumpbl of issues including response and he would play commander in chief. instead of building a fire wall, extra support, he went easy and did not attack on libya which in retrospect looks smart but then he didn't have a margin. he did have extra that he could have had by putting president on the defensive on libya. he was left out there with four point majority and five point majority. lost it over the last week did not have the opportunity or time to recover. that is a tactical error. this cosmic stuff about reinventing the party, i think that is a huge mistake. >> we're told they're in front of the stage awaiting governor romney. we have confirmed they have,

the governor called the president to concede the race. i want to ask you this, charles you talk about the upcoming stars in this republican party. stand by, we'll listen to the governor. >> thank you. thank you. thank you, my friends, thank you so very much. thank you. thank you. thank you. i have just called president obama to congratulate him on his victory. his supporters and his campaign also deserve

congratulations. i wish all of them well. but particularly the president, the first lady, and their daughters. this is a time of great challenges for america and i pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation. i want to thank paul ryan for all he's done for our campaign. and for our country. besides my wife, ann, paul is the best choice i've ever made. and i trust his interelect and commitment to principle will continue to contribute to the good of our nation. i also want to thank ann, the love of my life.

she would have been a wonderful first lady. she's... she has been that and more to me and our family and to the many people as she is touched with her compassion and care. i thanked my sons for tireless work and their wives and children for picking up the slack as their husband and dad spent many weeks away from home. i want to thank matt rhoads and the dedicated catch yain team he led. they have made an extraordinary effort not just for me, but also for the country we love. and to you here tonight and the team across the country, volunteers, fund-raisers, donors, surrogates. i don't believe there has been

an effort in our party that can compare with what you have done over the past years. thank you so very much. thank you for hours of work, calls and speeches. resources and prayers you gave deeply from yourselfs and performed magnificently. you inspired us and humbled us. you've been the best we could have imagined. the nation is in a critical point. we can't risk partisan bickering. our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people's work. we have to rise to the occasion. we look to our teachers and professors we count on you to inspire our children with a passion for learning and look to our pastors and rabbies and counselors to testify of the enduring principles upon which our society is built.